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Peanut Jar Mixers Development 8

May Revolution

1810 revolution in Buenos Aires

The May Revolution () was a week-long series of events that took place from May 18 to 25, 1810, in Buenos Aires, capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. This Spanish colony included roughly the territories of present-day Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and parts of Brazil. The result was the removal of Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros and the establishment of a local government, the Primera Junta (First Junta), on May 25. The May Revolution was a direct reaction to Napoleon's invasion of Spain. In 1808, King Ferdinand VII of Spain abdicated in favor of Napoleon, who granted the throne to his brother, Joseph Bonaparte. A Supreme Central Junta led resistance to Joseph's government and the French occupation of Spain, but eventually suffered a series of reversals that resulted in the Spanish loss of the northern half of the country. On February 1, 1810, French troops took Seville and gained control of most of Andalusia. The Supreme Junta retreated to Cádiz, formed the Council of Regency of Spain and the Indies to govern, and dissolved itself. News of these events arrived in Buenos Aires on May 18, brought by British ships. Viceroy Cisneros tried to maintain the political status quo, but a group of criollo lawyers and military officials organized an open cabildo (a special meeting of notables of the city) on May 22 to decide the future of the Viceroyalty. The Regency of Spain was the prelude to the Spanish Cortes of Cádiz of 1810 and the Spanish Constitution of 1812. All of these Spanish governments considered the Argentine Junta to be insurgent and denied it any legitimacy to govern the territories of the viceroyalty. At the other end, delegates of the Junta refused to recognize the Council of Regency in Spain and established a junta to govern in place of Cisneros, as the government that had appointed him Viceroy no longer existed. To maintain a sense of continuity, Cisneros was initially appointed president of the Junta. However, this caused much popular unrest, and so Cisneros resigned under pressure on May 25. The newly formed government, the Primera Junta, included only representatives from Buenos Aires and invited other cities of the Viceroyalty to send delegates to join them. The revolutionary army began the war and this resulted in the outbreak of a secessionist Civil war between the regions that accepted the outcome of the events at Buenos Aires and those that remained loyal to Spain. The May Revolution began the Argentine War of Independence, although no declaration of independence from Spain was issued at the time and the Primera Junta continued to govern in the name of the king, Ferdinand VII, as a subordinate king to popular sovereignty. As similar events occurred in many other cities of the continent, the May Revolution is also considered one of the early events of the Spanish American wars of independence. The question of the mask of Ferdinand is particularly controversial in Argentine History. Historians today debate whether the revolutionaries were truly loyal to the Spanish crown, or whether the declaration of fidelity to the king was a necessary ruse to conceal the true objective—to achieve independence—from a population that was not yet ready to accept such a radical change, but there is strong evidence of the truly loyal to the Spanish crown. The Argentine Declaration of Independence was issued at the Congress of Tucumán on July 9, 1816. ## Causes ### International causes The U.S. declaration of independence from Great Britain in 1776 led criollos (Spanish peoples born in the Americas) to believe that revolution and independence from Spain were feasible. Between 1775 and 1783, the American patriots of the Thirteen Colonies waged a war against both the local loyalists and the Kingdom of Great Britain, eventually establishing a republican government in the place of a constitutional monarchy. The fact that Spain had aided the colonies during their war with Britain weakened the idea that it would be a crime to end one's allegiance to the parent state. The ideals of the French Revolution of 1789 spread across Europe and the Americas as well. The overthrow and execution of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette ended centuries of monarchy and removed the privileges of the nobility. Liberal ideals in the political and economic fields developed and spread through the Atlantic Revolutions across most of the Western world. The concept of the divine right of kings was questioned by the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, by the oft-quoted statement that "all men are created equal" in the United States Declaration of Independence and even by the Spanish church. However, the spread of such ideas was forbidden in the Spanish territories, as was the sale of related books or their unauthorized possession. Spain instituted those bans when it declared war on France after the execution of Louis XVI and retained them after the peace treaty of 1796. News of the events of 1789 and copies of the publications of the French Revolution spread around Spain despite efforts to keep them at bay. Many enlightened criollos came into contact with liberal authors and their works during their university studies, either in Europe or at the University of Chuquisaca (modern Sucre). Books from the United States found their way into the Spanish colonies through Caracas, owing to the proximity of Venezuela to the United States and the West Indies. The Industrial Revolution started in Britain, with the use of plateways, canals and steam power. This led to dramatic increases in the productive capabilities of Britain, and created a need for new markets to sell its products. The Napoleonic Wars with France made this a difficult task, after Napoleon imposed the Continental System, which forbade his allies and conquests to trade with Britain. Thus Britain looked to new sources of trade, including Spain's colonies in South America, but could not do so because the colonies were restricted to trade only with Spain. To achieve this economic objective, Britain initially tried to invade Rio de la Plata and capture key cities in Spanish America. When that failed, they chose to promote the Spanish-American aspirations of emancipation from Spain. The mutiny of Aranjuez in 1808 led King Charles IV of Spain to abdicate in favor of his son, Ferdinand VII. Charles IV requested that Napoleon restore him to the throne; instead, Napoleon crowned his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as the new Spanish King. These events are known as the Abdications of Bayonne. Joseph's coronation was met with severe resistance in Spain, which started the Peninsular War, and the Supreme Central Junta took power in the name of the absent king. This also led to Spain switching alliances from France to Britain. France eventually invaded Sevilla, and a Council of Regency based in Cadiz replaced the disbanded Supreme Central Junta. ### National causes Spain forbade its American colonies to trade with other nations or foreign colonies, and imposed itself as the only buyer and vendor for their international trade. This situation damaged the viceroyalty, as Spain's economy was not powerful enough to produce the huge supply of goods that the numerous colonies would need. This caused economic shortages and recession. The Spanish trade routes favored the ports of Mexico and Lima, to the detriment of Buenos Aires. As a result, Buenos Aires smuggled those products that could not be obtained legitimately. Most local authorities allowed this smuggling as a lesser evil, even though it was illegal, and it occasionally equalled in volume the legal commerce with Spain. Two antagonistic factions emerged: the landowners wanted free trade so they could sell their products abroad, while the merchants, who benefited from the high prices of smuggled imports, opposed free trade because prices would come down. The Spanish monarchy appointed their own candidates to most of the political offices in the viceroyalty, usually favoring Spaniards from Europe. In most cases, the appointees had little knowledge of or interest in local issues. Consequently, there was a growing rivalry between criollos and peninsulars (those born in Spain). Most criollos thought that peninsulars had undeserved advantages and received preferential treatment in politics and society. The lower clergy had a similar sentiment about the higher echelons of the religious hierarchy. Events developed at a slower pace than in the United States independence movement. This was in part because the clergy controlled the entire educational system in Spanish America, which led the population to hold the same conservative ideas and follow the same customs as in Spain. Buenos Aires and Montevideo were captured and recaptured during the British invasions. In 1806, a small British army led by William Carr Beresford managed to occupy Buenos Aires for a brief time; a Montevidean army led by Santiago de Liniers recaptured the city. The following year, a larger army seized Montevideo, but was overwhelmed by the forces of Buenos Aires; the British capitulated and returned Montevideo to the viceroyalty. There was no aid from Spain during either invasion. Liniers organized criollo militias during the preparations for the second invasion, in spite of the prohibition against them. The Patricios Regiment, led by Cornelio Saavedra, was the biggest criollo army. These events gave criollos military power and political influence that they did not have before and, since the victory was achieved without any help from Spain, it boosted criollo confidence in their independent capabilities. The Portuguese royal family left Europe and settled in their colony of Brazil in 1808, after their escape from the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal. Carlota Joaquina, sister of Ferdinand VII, was the wife of the Portuguese prince regent, but had her own political projects. As she avoided the later capture of the Spanish royal family, she attempted to take charge of the viceroyalty as regent. This political project, known as Carlotism, sought to prevent a French invasion of the Americas. A small secret society of criollos, composed of politicians such as Manuel Belgrano and Juan José Castelli, and military leaders such as Antonio Beruti and Hipólito Vieytes, supported this project. They considered it an opportunity to get a local government instead of a European one, or a step towards a potential declaration of independence. The project was resisted by Viceroy Liniers, most peninsulars, and some criollos, including Cornelio Saavedra and the lawyers Mariano Moreno and Juan José Paso. They suspected that it concealed Portuguese expansionist ambitions over the region. The supporters of Carlota Joaquina intended her to head a constitutional monarchy, whereas she wanted to govern an absolute monarchy; these conflicting goals undermined the project and led to its failure. Britain, which had a strong influence in the politics of the Portuguese Empire, opposed the project as well: they did not want Spain split into several kingdoms, and considered Carlota Joaquina unable to prevent this. ## Prelude ### Liniers government After the British invasion of 1806, Santiago de Liniers successfully reconquered Buenos Aires. The population did not allow Rafael de Sobremonte to continue as Viceroy. He had escaped to Cordoba with the public treasury while the battle was still in progress. A law enacted in 1778 required the treasury to be moved to a safe location in the case of a foreign attack, but Sobremonte was still seen as a coward by the population. The Royal Audiencia of Buenos Aires did not allow his return to Buenos Aires and elected Liniers, acclaimed as a popular hero, as an interim Viceroy. This was an unprecedented action, the first time that a Spanish viceroy was deposed by local government institutions, and not by the King of Spain himself; King Charles IV ratified the appointment at a later time. Liniers armed the entire population of Buenos Aires, including criollos and slaves, and defeated a second British invasion attempt in 1807. The Liniers administration was popular among criollos, but not among peninsulars such as the merchant Martín de Álzaga and the Governor of Montevideo, Francisco Javier de Elío. They requested the Spanish authorities appoint a new viceroy. In the wake of the outbreak of the Peninsular War, de Elío created the Junta of Montevideo, which would scrutinise all the orders from Buenos Aires and reserve the right to ignore them, but did not openly deny the authority of the Viceroy or declare Montevideo independent. Martín de Álzaga began a mutiny to remove Liniers. On January 1, 1809, an open cabildo (an extraordinary meeting of vecinos, prominent people of the city) chaired by Álzaga demanded the resignation of Liniers and the appointment of a local junta. The Spanish militia and a group of people summoned by the meeting gathered to support the rebellion. A small number of criollos, notably Mariano Moreno, supported the mutiny, but most of them did not. They felt that Álzaga wanted to remove the Viceroy to avoid his political authority while keeping the social differences between criollos and peninsulars unchanged. The riot was quickly routed when criollo militias led by Cornelio Saavedra surrounded the plaza and dispersed the rebels. As a result of the failed mutiny, the rebel militias were disarmed. This included all peninsular militias, and the power of the criollos increased as a result. The leaders of the plot, with the exception of Moreno, were exiled to Carmen de Patagones. Javier de Elío freed them and gave them political asylum at Montevideo. ### Cisneros government The Supreme Central Junta replaced Liniers with the naval officer Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros, a veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar, to end the political turmoil in the Río de la Plata. He arrived in Montevideo in June 1809 for the handover. Manuel Belgrano proposed that Liniers should resist on the grounds that he had been confirmed as Viceroy by a King of Spain, whereas Cisneros lacked such legitimacy. The criollo militias shared Belgrano's proposal, but Liniers handed over the government to Cisneros without resistance. Javier de Elío accepted the authority of the new Viceroy, and dissolved the Junta of Montevideo. Cisneros rearmed the disbanded peninsular militias, and pardoned those responsible for the mutiny. Álzaga was not freed, but his sentence was commuted to house arrest. There was concern about events in Spain and about the legitimacy of local governors in Upper Peru as well. On May 25, 1809, the Chuquisaca Revolution deposed Ramón García de León y Pizarro as Governor of Chuquisaca and replaced him with Juan Antonio Alvarez de Arenales. On July 16, the La Paz revolution, led by Colonel Pedro Domingo Murillo, deposed the Governor of La Paz and elected a new junta. A swift reaction from the Spanish authorities defeated those rebellions. An army of 1,000 men sent from Buenos Aires found no resistance at Chuquisaca, took control of the city and overthrew the Junta. Murillo tried to defend La Paz, but his 800 militiamen were completely outnumbered by the more than 5,000 soldiers sent from Lima. He and the other leaders were later beheaded, and their heads were exhibited as a deterrent. These measures contrasted sharply with the pardon that Martín de Álzaga and others had received after a short time in prison, and the resentment of criollos against the peninsulars deepened. Juan José Castelli was present at the deliberations of the University of Chuquisaca, where Bernardo Monteagudo developed the Syllogism of Chuquisaca, a legal explanation to justify self-governance. This influenced his ideas during the "May Week". On November 25, 1809, Cisneros created the Political Surveillance Court to persecute afrancesados (supporters of Joseph Bonaparte) and independentists. However, he rejected economist José María Romero's proposal to banish a number of people considered dangerous to the Spanish regime, such as Saavedra, Paso, Vieytes, Castelli and Moreno, among others. Romero warned Cisneros against spreading news that might be considered subversive. Criollos felt that soon any pretext would be enough to lead to the outbreak of revolution. In April 1810, Cornelio Saavedra advised to his friends: "it's not time yet, let the figs ripen and then we'll eat them". He meant that he would not support rushed actions against the Viceroy, but would do so at a strategically favorable moment, such as when Napoleon's forces gained a decisive advantage in their war against Spain. ## May Week The May Week was the period of time in Buenos Aires which began with the confirmation of the fall of the Supreme Central Junta and ended with the dismissal of Cisneros and the establishment of the Primera Junta. On 14 May 1810, the schooner HMS Mistletoe arrived at Buenos Aires with European newspapers that reported the dissolution of the Supreme Central Junta the previous January. The city of Seville had been invaded by French armies, which were already dominating most of the Iberian Peninsula. The newspapers reported that some of the former members of the Junta had taken refuge on the Isla de León in Cadiz. This was confirmed in Buenos Aires on May 17, when the British ship John Parish arrived in Montevideo; the most recent newspapers reported that members of the Supreme Central Junta had been dismissed. The Council of Regency of Cadiz was not seen as a successor of the Spanish resistance but as an attempt to restore absolutism in Spain. The Supreme Central Junta was seen as sympathetic to the new ideas. South American patriots feared both a complete French victory in the peninsula and an absolutist restoration. Cisneros monitored the British ships and seized their newspapers to conceal the news, but a newspaper came into the hands of Belgrano and Castelli. They spread the news among other patriots and challenged the legitimacy of the Viceroy, who had been appointed by the fallen junta. When Cornelio Saavedra, head of the regiment of Patricians, was informed of this news, he decided that it was finally the ideal time to take action against Cisneros. Martín Rodríguez proposed to overthrow the Viceroy by force, but Castelli and Saavedra rejected this idea and proposed the convening of an open cabildo. ### Friday, May 18 and Saturday, May 19 Although Viceroy Cisneros attempted to conceal the news of the Spanish defeat, the rumor had already spread throughout Buenos Aires. Most of the population was uneasy; there was high activity at the barracks and in the Plaza, and most shops were closed. The "Café de Catalanes" and the "Fonda de las Naciones", frequent criollo meeting places, became venues for political discussions and radical proclamations; Francisco José Planes shouted that Cisneros should be hanged in the Plaza as retribution for the execution of the leaders of the ill-fated La Paz revolution. People who sympathized with the absolutist government were harassed, but the fights were of little consequence because nobody was allowed to take muskets or swords out of the barracks. The Viceroy, trying to calm the criollos, gave his own version of events in a proclamation. He asked for allegiance to King Ferdinand VII, but popular unrest continued to intensify. He was aware of the news, but only said that the situation on the Iberian Peninsula was delicate; he did not confirm the fall of the Junta. His proposal was to make a government body that would rule on behalf of Ferdinand VII, together with Viceroy of Peru José Fernando de Abascal y Sousa, Governor of Potosí Francisco de Paula Sanz and President of the Royal Audiencia of Charcas Vicente Nieto. Not fooled by the Viceroy's communiqué, some criollos met at the houses of Nicolás Rodríguez Peña and Martín Rodríguez. During these secret meetings, they appointed a representative commission composed of Juan José Castelli and Martín Rodríguez to request that Cisneros convene an open cabildo to decide the future of the Viceroyalty. During the night of May 19 there were further discussions at Rodríguez Peña's house. Saavedra, called by Viamonte, joined the meeting, which involved military and civilian leaders. They arranged that Belgrano and Saavedra would meet with Juan José de Lezica, the senior alcalde (municipal magistrate), while Castelli would meet with the procurator Julián de Leiva, to ask for their support. They asked the Viceroy to allow an open cabildo, and said that if it was not freely granted the people and the criollo troops would march to the Plaza, force the Viceroy to resign by any means necessary, and replace him with a patriot government. Saavedra commented to Lezica that he was suspected of betrayal because of his constant requests for cautious and measured steps. This comment was designed to pressure Lezica into speeding up the legal system to allow the people to express themselves, or otherwise risk a major rebellion. Lezica asked for patience and time to persuade the Viceroy, and leave a massive demonstration as a last resort. He argued that if the Viceroy was deposed in that way, it would constitute a rebellion, which would turn the revolutionaries into outlaws. Manuel Belgrano gave the following Monday as the deadline to confirm the open cabildo before taking direct action. Leiva would later act as a mediator, being both a confidante of Cisneros and a trusted negotiator for the more moderate revolutionaries. ### Sunday, May 20 Lezica informed Cisneros of the request for an open cabildo and the Viceroy consulted Leiva, who spoke in favor of it. The Viceroy summoned military commanders to come to the fort at 7 pm, to demand military support. There were rumors that it could be a trap to capture them and take control of the barracks. To prevent this, they took command of the grenadiers that guarded the Fort and seized the keys of all entrances while meeting with the Viceroy. Colonel Cornelio Saavedra, head of the Regiment of Patricios, responded on behalf of all the criollo regiments. He compared the current international situation with that prevailing at the time of the mutiny of Álzaga over a year earlier, pointed out that Spain was now almost entirely under Napoleonic control and that the undefeated Spanish provinces were very small in comparison with the Americas. He rejected the claim of sovereignty of Cadiz over the Americas, and concluded that the local armies wanted to look after themselves, rather than following the fate of Spain. Finally, he pointed out that the Supreme Central Junta that appointed Cisneros as Viceroy no longer existed, so he rejected Cisneros' legitimacy as Viceroy and denied him the protection of the troops under his command. Castelli and Martín Rodríguez moved to the Fort for an interview with Cisneros. Juan Florencio Terrada, commander of the Infantry Grenadiers, joined them, because their barracks were located under Cisneros' window, and his presence would not allow the Viceroy to request military aid to take Castelli and Martín Rodríguez prisoners. The guards let them pass unannounced, and they found Cisneros playing cards with Brigadier Quintana, prosecutor Caspe and aide Coicolea. Castelli and Rodríguez demanded once again the convening of an open cabildo, and Cisneros reacted angrily, considering their request an outrage. Rodríguez interrupted him and forced him to give a definitive answer. After a short private discussion with Caspe, Cisneros reluctantly gave his consent. That night, many of the revolutionaries attended a theatre production on the theme of tyranny, called Rome Saved. The lead actor was Morante, playing Cicero. The police chief requested Morante to feign illness and not appear, so that the play could be replaced with Misanthropy and Repentance by the German novelist and playwright August von Kotzebue. Rumors of police censorship spread quickly; Morante ignored the request and performed the play as planned. In the fourth act, Morante made a patriotic speech, about the Gaul threat to Rome (the Gauls are ancestors of the French people) and the need for strong leadership to resist the danger. This scene lifted the revolutionaries' spirits and led to frenzied applause. Juan José Paso stood up and cried out for the freedom of Buenos Aires, and a small fight ensued. After the play, the revolutionaries returned to Peña's house. They learned the result of the meeting with Cisneros, but were unsure as to whether Cisneros intended to keep his word. They organized a demonstration for the following day to ensure that the open cabildo would be held as decided. ### Monday, May 21 At 3 pm, the Cabildo began its routine work, but was interrupted by 600 armed men named the Infernal Legion, who occupied the Plaza de la Victoria and loudly demanded the convening of an open cabildo and the resignation of Viceroy Cisneros. They carried a portrait of Ferdinand VII and the lapels of their jackets bore a white ribbon that symbolized criollo–Spanish unity. Domingo French, the mail carrier of the city, and Antonio Beruti, an employee of the treasury, led the rioters. It was rumored that Cisneros had been killed, and that Saavedra would take control of the government. Saavedra was at the barracks at that moment, concerned about the demonstration. He thought the violence should be stopped and that radical measures such as the assassination of Cisneros should be prevented, but he also thought that the troops would mutiny if the demonstrations were suppressed. The people in the Plaza did not believe that Cisneros would allow the open cabildo the next day. Leiva left the Cabildo, and Belgrano, who was representing the crowd, requested a definitive commitment. Leiva explained that everything would go ahead as planned, but the Cabildo needed time to prepare. He asked Belgrano to help the Cabildo with the work, as his intervention would be seen by the crowd as a guarantee that their demands would not be ignored. The crowd left the main hall but stayed in the Plaza. Belgrano protested about the guest list, which consisted of the wealthiest citizens, and thought that if the poor people were left outside there would be further unrest. The members of the Cabildo tried to convince him to give his support, but he left. Belgrano's departure enraged the crowd, as he did not explain what had happened, and the people feared a betrayal. Demands for Cisneros' immediate resignation replaced those for an open cabildo. The people finally settled down and dispersed when Saavedra intervened to say that the claims of the Infernal Legion were supported by the military. The invitations were distributed among 450 leading citizens and officials in the capital. The Cabildo compiled the guest list, and tried to guarantee the result, inviting people that would be likely to support the Viceroy. The revolutionaries countered this move with a similar one, so that most people would be against Cisneros instead. The printer Agustín Donado, supporting the revolutionaries, printed nearly 600 invitations instead of the 450 requested, and distributed the surplus among the criollos. During the night, Castelli, Rodríguez, French and Beruti visited all the barracks to harangue the troops and prepare them for the following day. ### Tuesday, May 22 According to the minutes, only about 251 out of the 450 officially invited guests attended the open cabildo. French and Beruti, in command of 600 men armed with knives, shotguns and rifles, controlled access to the square to ensure that the open cabildo had a majority of criollos. All noteworthy religious and civilian people were present, as well as militia commanders and many prominent residents. The only notable absence was that of Martín de Álzaga, who was still under house arrest. A merchant, José Ignacio Rezábal, attended the open cabildo but, in a letter to the priest Julián S. de Agüero, said that he had some doubts which were shared by other people close to him. He feared that, no matter which party prevailed in the open cabildo, it would take revenge against the other, the Mutiny of Álzaga being a recent precedent. He felt that the open cabildo would lack legitimacy if too many criollos were allowed to take part in it as a result of the aforementioned manipulation of the guest list. The meeting lasted from morning to midnight, including the reading of the proclamation, the debate and the vote. There was no secret ballot; votes were heard one at a time and recorded in the minutes. The main themes of the debate were the legitimacy of the government and the authority of the Viceroy. The principle of retroversion of the sovereignty to the people stated that, in the absence of the legitimate monarch, power returned to the people; they were entitled to form a new government. This principle was commonplace in Spanish scholasticism and rationalist philosophy, but had never been applied in case law. Its validity divided the assembly into two main groups: one group rejected it and argued that the situation should remain unchanged; this group supported Cisneros as Viceroy. The other group supported change, and considered that they should establish a junta, like the ones established in Spain to replace the Viceroy. There was also a third position, taking the middle ground. The promoters of change did not recognize the authority of the Council of Regency, and argued that the colonies in America were not consulted in its formation. The debate tangentially discussed the rivalry between criollos and peninsulars; the Viceroy supporters felt that the will of peninsulars should prevail over that of criollos. One of the speakers for the first position was the bishop of Buenos Aires, Benito Lue y Riega, leader of the local church, who said: > Not only is there no reason to get rid of the Viceroy, but even if no part of Spain remained unsubdued, the Spaniards in America ought to take it back and resume command over it. America should only be ruled by the natives when there is no longer a Spaniard there. If even a single member of the Central Junta of Seville were to land on our shores, we should receive him as the Sovereign. Juan José Castelli was the main speaker for the revolutionaries. He based his speech on two key ideas: the government's lapsed legitimacy—he stated that the Supreme Central Junta was dissolved and had no rights to designate a Regency—and the principle of retroversion of sovereignty. He spoke after Riega, and replied that the American people should assume control of their government until Ferdinand VII could return to the throne. > Nobody could call the whole nation a criminal, nor the individuals that have aired their political views. If the right of conquest belongs by right to the conquering country, it would be fair for Spain to quit resisting the French and submit to them, by the same principles for which it is expected that the Americans submit themselves to the peoples of Pontevedra. The reason and the rule must be equal for everybody. Here there are no conquerors or conquered; here there are only Spaniards. The Spaniards of Spain have lost their land. The Spaniards of America are trying to save theirs. Let the ones from Spain deal with themselves as they can; do not worry, we American Spaniards know what we want and where we go. So I suggest we vote: that we replace the Viceroy with a new authority that will be subject to the parent state if it is saved from the French, and independent if Spain is finally subjugated. Pascual Ruiz Huidobro stated that, since the authority that appointed Cisneros had expired, Cisneros should no longer have a place in the government. Huidobro felt that the Cabildo should be in government, as it was the representative of the people. Melchor Fernández, Juan León Ferragut and Joaquín Grigera supported his vote, among others. Attorney Manuel Genaro Villota, representative of the Spanish, said that the city of Buenos Aires had no right to make unilateral decisions about the legitimacy of the Viceroy or the Council of Regency without the participation of other cities of the Viceroyalty. He argued that such an action would break the unity of the country and establish as many sovereignties as there were cities. His intention was to keep Cisneros in power by delaying any possible action. Juan José Paso accepted his first point, but argued that the situation in Europe and the possibility that Napoleon's forces could conquer the American colonies demanded an urgent resolution. He then expounded the "argument of the elder sister", reasoning that Buenos Aires should take the initiative and make the changes deemed necessary and appropriate, on the express condition that the other cities would be invited to comment as soon as possible. The rhetorical device of the "elder sister", comparable to negotiorum gestio, makes an analogy between the relationship of Buenos Aires and other cities of the viceroyalty with a sibling relationship. The priest Juan Nepomuceno Solá then proposed that the Cabildo should receive the provisional command, until the formation of a governing junta made up of representatives from all populations of the Viceroyalty. Manuel Alberti, Miguel de Azcuénaga (who would be members of the Primera Junta some days later), Escalada and Argerich (or Aguirre) supported his vote, among others. Cornelio Saavedra suggested that the Cabildo should receive the provisional command until the formation of a governing junta in the manner and form that the Cabildo would deem as appropriate. He said "...there shall be no doubt that it is the people that create authority or command." At the time of the vote, Castelli's position coincided with that of Saavedra. Manuel Belgrano stood near a window and, in the event of a problematic development, he would give a signal by waiving a white cloth, upon which the people gathered in the Plaza would force their way into the Cabildo. However, there were no problems and this emergency plan was not implemented. The historian Vicente Fidel López revealed that his father, Vicente López y Planes, who was present at the event, saw that Mariano Moreno was worried near the end in spite of the majority achieved. Moreno told Planes that the Cabildo was about to betray them. ### Wednesday, May 23 The debate took all day, and the votes were counted very late that night. After the presentations, people voted for the continuation of the Viceroy, alone or at the head of a junta, or his dismissal. The ideas explained were divided into a small number of proposals, designated with the names of their main supporters, and the people then voted for one of those proposals. The voting lasted for a long time, and the result was to dismiss the Viceroy by a large majority: 155 votes to 69. Manuel José Reyes stated that he found no reason to depose the Viceroy, and that it would be enough to appoint a junta headed by Cisneros. His proposal had nearly 30 votes. Another 30 votes supported Cisneros, with no change to the political system. A small group supported the proposal of Martín José de Choteco, who also supported Cisneros. There were also many different proposals involving the removal of Cisneros. Many of them required the new authorities to be elected by the Cabildo. Pascual Ruiz Huidobro proposed that the Cabildo should rule in the interim and appoint a new government, but this proposal made no reference to popular sovereignty or the creation of a junta. This proposal received 35 votes, and sought simply to replace Cisneros with Huidobro: Huidobro was the most senior military officer, and thus the natural candidate under current laws to replace the viceroy in the lack of a new appointment from Spain. Juan Nepomuceno Solá proposed a junta composed of delegates from all the provinces of the viceroyalty, while the Cabildo should govern in the interim; this proposal received nearly 20 votes. Cornelio Saavedra, whose aforementioned proposal was that the Cabildo should appoint a Junta and rule in the interim, got the largest number of votes. A number of other proposals received only a few votes each. At dawn on May 23, the Cabildo informed the population that the Viceroy would end his mandate. The highest authority would be transferred temporarily to the Cabildo until the appointment of a governing junta. Notices were placed at various points throughout the city, which announced the imminent creation of a junta and the summoning of representatives from the provinces. The notices also called for the public to refrain from actions contrary to public policy. ### Thursday, May 24 The Cabildo interpreted the decision of the open cabildo in its own way. When it formed the new Junta to govern until the arrival of representatives from other cities, Leiva arranged for former viceroy Cisneros to be appointed president of the Junta and commander of the armed forces. There are many interpretations of his motives for departing from the decision of the open cabildo in this way. Four other members were appointed to the Junta: criollos Cornelio Saavedra and Juan José Castelli, and peninsulars Juan Nepomuceno Solá and José Santos Inchaurregui. Leiva wrote a constitutional code to regulate the actions of the Junta. It stipulated that the Junta could not exercise judicial power, which was reserved for the Royal Audiencia of Buenos Aires; that Cisneros could not act without the support of the other members of the Junta; that the Cabildo could dismiss anyone who neglected his duty; that the Cabildo's consent would be required to create new taxes; that the Junta would sanction a general amnesty for those who had aired opinions at the open cabildo; and that the Junta would invite the other cities to send delegates. The commanders of the armed forces, including Saavedra and Pedro Andrés García, agreed to this code. The Junta swore the oath of office that afternoon. These developments shocked the revolutionaries. Unsure of what to do next, they feared that they would be punished, like the revolutionaries of Chuquisaca and La Paz. Moreno abjured relations with the others and shut himself in his home. There was a meeting at Rodríguez Peña's house. They felt that the Cabildo would not pursue such a plot without the blessing of Saavedra and that Castelli should resign from the Junta. Tagle took a different view: he thought that Saavedra may have accepted out of weakness or naivety and that Castelli should stay in the Junta to counter the others' influence on him. Meanwhile, a mob led by Domingo French and Antonio Beruti filled the Plaza. The stability of Cisneros in power, albeit in an office other than Viceroy, was seen as an insult to the will of the open cabildo. Colonel Martín Rodriguez warned that, if the army were to commit support to a government that kept Cisneros, they would soon have to fire on the people, and that they would revolt. He said that "everyone without exception" demanded the removal of Cisneros. That night, Castelli and Saavedra informed Cisneros of their resignation from the newly formed Junta. They explained that the population was on the verge of violent revolution and would remove Cisneros by force if he did not resign as well. They warned that they did not have the power to stop that: neither Castelli to stop his friends, nor Saavedra to prevent the Regiment of Patricians from mutiny. Cisneros wanted to wait for the following day, but they said that there was no time for further delays, so he finally agreed to resign. He sent a resignation letter to the Cabildo for consideration on the following day. Chiclana felt encouraged when Saavedra resigned, and started to request signatures for a manifesto about the will of the people. Moreno refused any further involvement, but Castelli and Peña trusted that he would eventually join them if events unfolded as they expected. ### Friday, May 25 On the morning of May 25, in spite of bad weather, a crowd gathered in the Plaza de la Victoria, as did the militia led by Domingo French and Antonio Beruti. They demanded the recall of the Junta elected the previous day, the final resignation of Cisneros, and the appointment of a new junta that did not include him. Historian Bartolomé Mitre stated that French and Beruti distributed blue and white ribbons, similar to the modern cockade of Argentina, among those present. Later historians doubt it, but consider it possible that the revolutionaries used distinctive marks of some kind for identification. It was rumored that the Cabildo might reject Cisneros' resignation. Because of delays in issuing an official resolution, the crowd became agitated, clamoring that "the people want to know what is going on\!". The Cabildo met at 9 am and rejected Cisneros' resignation. They considered that the crowd had no legitimate right to influence something that the Cabildo had already decided and implemented. They considered that, as the Junta was in command, the demonstration should be suppressed by force, and made the members responsible for any changes to the resolution of the previous day. To enforce those orders, they summoned the chief commanders, but these did not obey. Many of them, including Saavedra, did not appear. Those that did stated that they could not support the government order, and that the commanders would be disobeyed if they ordered the troops to repress the demonstrators. The crowd's agitation increased, and they overran the chapter house. Leiva and Lezica requested that someone who could act as spokesman for the people should join them inside the hall and explain the people's desires. Beruti, Chiclana, French and Grela were allowed to pass. Leiva attempted to discourage the rioter Pancho Planes, but he entered the hall as well. The Cabildo argued that Buenos Aires had no right to break the political system of the viceroyalty without discussing it with the other provinces; French and Chiclana replied that the call for a Congress had already been considered. The Cabildo called the commanders to deliberate with them. As had happened several times in the last few days, Romero explained that the soldiers would mutiny if forced to fight against the rioters on behalf of Cisneros. The Cabildo still refused to give up, until the noise of the demonstration was heard in the hall. They feared that the demonstrators could overrun the building and reach them. Martín Rodríguez pointed out that the only way to calm the demonstrators was to accept Cisneros' resignation. Leiva agreed, convinced the other members, and the people returned to the Plaza. Rodríguez headed to Azcuenaga's house to meet the other revolutionaries to plan the final stages of the revolution. The demonstration overran the Cabildo again, and reached the hall of deliberations. Beruti spoke on behalf of the people, and said that the new Junta should be elected by the people and not by the Cabildo. He said that, besides the nearly 400 people already gathered, the barracks were full of people who supported them, and he threatened that they would take control, by force if necessary. The Cabildo replied by requesting their demands in writing. After a long interval, a document containing 411 signatures was delivered to the Cabildo. This paper proposed a new composition for the governing Junta, and a 500-man expedition to assist the provinces. The document—still preserved—listed most army commanders and many well-known residents, and contained many illegible signatures. French and Beruti signed the document, stating "for me and for six hundred more". However, there is no unanimous view among historians about the authorship of the document. Meanwhile, the weather improved and the sun broke through the clouds. The people in the plaza saw it as a favorable omen for the revolution. The Sun of May was created a few years later with reference to this event. The Cabildo accepted the document and moved to the balcony to submit it directly to the people for ratification. But, because of the late hour and the weather, the number of people in the plaza had declined. Leiva ridiculed the claim of the remaining representatives to speak on behalf of the people. This wore the patience of the few who were still in the plaza in the rain. Beruti did not accept any further delays, and threatened to call people to arms. Facing the prospect of further violence, the popular request was read aloud and immediately ratified by those present. The Primera Junta was finally established. It was composed by president Cornelio Saavedra, members Manuel Alberti, Miguel de Azcuénaga, Manuel Belgrano, Juan José Castelli, Domingo Matheu and Juan Larrea, and secretaries Juan José Paso and Mariano Moreno. The rules governing it were roughly the same as those issued the day before, with the additional provisions that the Cabildo would watch over the members of the Junta and that the Junta itself would appoint replacements in case of vacancies. Saavedra spoke to the crowd, and then moved on to the Fort, among salvos of artillery and the ringing of bells. Meanwhile, Cisneros dispatched a post rider to Córdoba, Argentina, to warn Santiago de Liniers about what had happened in Buenos Aires and to request military action against the Junta. ## Aftermath Buenos Aires endured the whole Spanish American Wars of independence without being reconquered by royalist armies or successful royalist counter-revolutions. However, it faced several internal conflicts. The May Revolution lacked a clear leader as other regions of Latin America; the secretary Mariano Moreno led the initial phase of the government, but he was removed shortly afterwards. The Council of Regency, the Royal Audiencia of Buenos Aires and the peninsulars opposed the new situation. The Royal Audiencia secretly swore allegiance to the Council of Regency a month later and sent communiqués to the other cities of the Viceroyalty, to request them to deny recognition to the new government. To put an end to these activities, the Junta assembled Cisneros and all the members of the Royal Audiencia on the pretext that their lives were in danger, and sent them into exile aboard the merchantman Dart. Captain Mark Brigut was instructed to avoid American ports and deliver all of them directly to the Canary Islands. The Junta then appointed a new Audiencia composed entirely of criollos loyal to the revolution. Every city in the territory of modern Argentina other than Córdoba endorsed the Primera Junta. The cities of the Upper Peru, however, did not take a position, owing to the recent outcomes of the Chuquisaca and La Paz Revolutions. Asunción del Paraguay rejected the Junta and swore loyalty to the Council of Regency. The Banda Oriental, under Francisco Javier de Elío, remained a royalist stronghold. Former Viceroy Santiago de Liniers organized a counter-revolution in Córdoba, and this became the first military campaign of the independent government. Despite the importance of Liniers himself, and his prestige as a popular hero for his role during the British invasions, the population of Córdoba preferred to support the revolution. This reduced the power of the counter-revolutionary army by means of desertions and sabotage. Liniers's troops were quickly defeated by the forces led by Francisco Ortiz de Ocampo. Ocampo refused to shoot the captive Liniers; hence the execution ordered by the Junta was carried out by Juan José Castelli. After the victory, the Primera Junta sent military expeditions to many other cities, to demand support and the election of representatives to it. Montevideo, which had a historical rivalry with Buenos Aires, opposed the Primera Junta and the Council of Regency declared it the new capital of the Viceroyalty, along with Francisco Javier de Elío as the new Viceroy. The city was well defended, so it could easily resist an invasion. Peripheral cities in the Banda Oriental acted contrary to Montevideo's will and supported the Buenos Aires Junta. José Gervasio Artigas led them, and kept Montevideo under siege. The final defeat of the Montevidean royalists was carried out in 1814 by Carlos María de Alvear and William Brown. The Captaincy General of Chile followed a process analogous to that of the May Revolution, and elected a Government Junta that inaugurated the brief period known as Patria Vieja. The Junta was defeated in 1814 at the Battle of Rancagua, and the subsequent Reconquista of Chile would make it a royalist stronghold once more. The Andes provided an effective natural barrier between the Argentine revolutionaries and Chile, so there was no military confrontation between them until the Crossing of the Andes, led by José de San Martín in 1817, a campaign that resulted in the defeat of the Chilean royalists. The Primera Junta increased in size when it incorporated the representatives sent by the provinces. From then on, the Junta was renamed the Junta Grande. It was dissolved shortly after the June 1811 defeat of the Argentine troops at the Battle of Huaqui, and two successive triumvirates exercised executive power over the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. In 1814, the second triumvirate was replaced by the authority of the Supreme Director. Meanwhile, Martín Miguel de Güemes contained the royalist armies sent from the Viceroyalty of Peru at Salta, while San Martín advanced towards the royalist stronghold of Lima by sea, on a Chilean–Argentine campaign. The war for independence gradually shifted towards northern South America. From 1814, Argentina descended into civil war. ### Consequences According to historian Félix Luna's Breve historia de los Argentinos (), one of the most important societal consequences of the May Revolution was the shift in the way the people and its rulers related. Until then, the conception of the common good prevailed: while royal authority was fully respected, if an instruction from the crown of Spain was considered detrimental to the common good of the local population, it was half-met or simply ignored. With the revolution, the concept of common good gave way to that of popular sovereignty, as theorized by Moreno, Castelli and Monteagudo, among others. This idea held that, in the absence of a legitimate authority, the people had the right to appoint their own leaders. Over time, popular sovereignty would give way to the idea of majority rule. This maturation of ideas was gradual, taking many decades to crystallize into stable electoral and political systems, but it was what ultimately led to the adoption of the republican system as the form of government for Argentina. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento stated similar views in his Facundo, and noted that cities were more receptive to republican ideas, while rural areas were more resistant to them, which led to the surge of caudillos. Another consequence, also according to Luna, was the dissolution of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata into several different units. Most of the cities and provinces had distinctive populations, economies, attitudes, contexts, and interests. Until the revolution, all of these peoples were held together by the authority of the Spanish government, but with its disappearance, people from Montevideo, Paraguay and the Upper Peru began to distance themselves from Buenos Aires. The brief existence of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, which had lasted barely 38 years, impeded the consolidation of a patriotic feeling and failed to bring a sense of community to all of the population. The new country of Argentina lacked an established concept of national identity capable to unite the population under a common idea of statehood. Juan Bautista Alberdi sees the May Revolution as one of the early manifestations of the power struggles between the city of Buenos Aires and the provinces—one of the axial conflicts at play in the Argentine civil wars. Alberdi wrote in his book "Escritos póstumos": > The revolution of May 1810 in Buenos Aires, intended to win the independence of Argentina from Spain, also had the consequence of emancipating the province of Buenos Aires from Argentina or, rather, of imposing the authority of this province upon the whole nation emancipated from Spain. That day, Spanish power over the Argentine provinces ended and that of Buenos Aires was established. ## Historical perspectives Historiographical studies of the May Revolution do not face many doubts or unknown details. Most of the information was properly recorded at the time and was made available to the public by the Primera Junta as patriotic propaganda. Because of this, historical views on the topic differ in their interpretations of the meanings, causes and consequences of the events, rather than in the accuracy of their depiction of the events themselves. The modern version of events does not differ significantly from the contemporary one. The first people to write about the May Revolution were participants who wrote memoirs, biographies and diaries. However, their works were motivated by purposes other than historiographic ones, such as to explain the reasons for their actions, clean their public images, or express their support or rejection of the public figures and ideas of the time. For example, Manuel Moreno wrote the biography of his brother Mariano as propaganda for the revolutions in Europe, and Cornelio Saavedra wrote his autobiography at a moment when his image was highly questioned, to justify himself to his sons. The first remarkable historiographical school of interpretation of the history of Argentina was founded by members of the 1837 generation, including Bartolomé Mitre. Mitre regarded the May Revolution as an iconic expression of political egalitarianism: a conflict between modern freedoms and oppression represented by the Spanish monarchy, and an attempt to establish a national organization on constitutional principles as opposed to the charismatic authority of the caudillos. These authors' views were treated as canonical until the end of the 19th century, when the proximity of the centennial encouraged authors to seek new perspectives. The newer authors would differ about the relative weight of the causes of the May Revolution and about whose intervention in the events was more decisive, but the main views expressed by Mitre were kept, such as to consider the revolution to be the birth of modern Argentina and an unavoidable event. These authors introduced the idea of popular intervention as another key element. By the time of the World Wars, liberal authors attempted to impose an ultimate and unquestionable historical perspective; Ricardo Levene and the Academia Nacional de la Historia were exponents of this tendency, which still kept most perspectives of Mitre. Left-wing authors took a revisionist view based on nationalism and anti-imperialism; they minimized the dispute between criollos and peninsulars and portrayed events as a dispute between enlightenment and absolutism. However, most of their work was focused on other historical periods. The May Revolution was not the product of the actions of a single political party with a clear and defined agenda, but a convergence of sectors with varying interests. Thus, there are a number of conflicting perspectives about it, because different authors highlight different aspects. Mitre, for example, referred to The Representation of the Landowners (an 1809 economic report by Mariano Moreno) and the role of the merchants to support the view that the May Revolution intended to obtain free trade and economic integration with Europe; right-wing revisionists center around Saavedra and the social customs of the time to describe the revolution under conservative principles; and left-wing revisionists use the example of Moreno, Castelli and the rioters led by French and Beruti to describe it as a radical revolution. ### Revolutionary purposes The government created on May 25 pronounced itself loyal to the deposed King of Spain Ferdinand VII, but historians disagree on whether this was sincere or not. Since Mitre, many historians think that this professed loyalty was merely a political deception to gain autonomy. The Primera Junta did not pledge allegiance to the Council of Regency, which was still in operation, and in 1810 it still seemed unlikely that Napoleon would be defeated and Ferdinand returned to the throne (which finally happened on December 11, 1813, with the Treaty of Valençay). The purpose of such a deception would have been to gain time to strengthen the position of the patriotic cause and avoid reactions that may have led to a counter-revolution, by making it appear that monarchical authority was still respected and that no revolution had taken place. The ruse is known as the "Mask of Ferdinand VII". It was upheld by the Primera Junta, the Junta Grande and the First Triumvirate. The Assembly of Year XIII was intended to declare independence, but failed to do so because of other political conflicts between its members. However, it suppressed mention of Ferdinand VII in official documents. Before the declaration of independence of 1816, the supreme directors considered other options, such as to negotiate with Spain or become a British protectorate. The change was potentially favorable for Britain, as trade with the cities of the area was facilitated, without the monopoly that Spain had maintained over their colonies for centuries. However, Britain's first priority was the war against France in Europe, and as such they could not be publicly seen to support Latin American independence movements or allow the military attention of Spain to be divided onto two different fronts. Consequently, they directed the various movements to temporarily avoid explicit demonstrations. These efforts were primarily by handled by Lord Strangford, the British ambassador at the court of Rio de Janeiro; he expressed support for the Junta, but under the condition that "...the behavior is consistent, and that [the] Capital [is] retained on behalf of Mr. Dn. Ferdinand VII and his legitimate successors". Later conflicts between Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Artigas led to political disputed in Europe, between Strangford and the Portuguese regent John VI of Portugal. Juan Bautista Alberdi and later historians such as Norberto Galasso, Luis Romero and José Carlos Chiaramonte doubted Mitre's interpretation and put forward different ones. Alberdi thought that "the Argentine revolution is a chapter of the Hispanoamerican revolution, as also of the Spanish one, as also of the French and European one". They did not consider it a dispute between independentism and colonialism, but instead a dispute between new libertarian ideas and absolutism. The intention was not to cut ties with Spain, but to reformulate the relationship; similarly, the American Revolution was not separatist at its initial steps either. Thus, it would have the characteristics of a civil war instead. Some points that would justify the idea would be the inclusion of Larrea, Matheu, and Belgrano in the Junta and the later appearance of José de San Martín: Larrea and Matheu were Spanish, Belgrano studied for many years in Spain, and San Martín had spent most of his adult life waging war in Spain against the French. When San Martín talked about enemies, he called them "royalists" or "Goths", but never "Spanish". According to those historians, the Spanish revolution against absolutism got mixed up with the Peninsular War. When Ferdinand VII stood against his father Charles IV, who was seen as an absolutist king, many Spaniards got the mistaken impression that he sympathized with the new enlightened ideas. Thus, the revolutions made in the Americas in the name of Ferdinand VII (such as the May Revolution, the Chuquisaca Revolution, or the one in Chile) would have sought to replace absolutist power with power formulated under the new ideas. Even if Spain was at war with France, the ideals of the French Revolution (liberty, equality and fraternity) were still respected. Those revolutions pronounced themselves enemies of Napoleon, but did not face any active French military attack; they promoted instead fights between Spanish armies for keeping either the old or new order. This situation would change with the final defeat of Napoleon and the return of Ferdinand VII to the throne, as he began the Absolutist Restoration and persecuted the supporters of the new libertarian ideas within Spain. For people in South America, to stay as a part of the Spanish Empire, but with a new relationship with the mother country, was no longer a feasible option: the only remaining options at this point were to return to absolutism or to adopt independentism. ## Legacy May 25 is a national day in Argentina, known as First Patriotic Government, with the character of a public holiday. The public holiday is set by law 21.329 and is always celebrated on May 25, regardless of the day of the week. The Argentina Centennial and the Argentina Bicentennial were celebrated in 1910 and 2010. May 25 was designated as a patriotic date in 1813, but the Argentine Declaration of Independence suggests July 9 as an alternative national day. At first this added to the conflicts between Buenos Aires and the provinces during the Argentine Civil War, because the date in May related to Buenos Aires and the date of July 9 related to the whole country. Thus the unitarian Bernardino Rivadavia canceled the celebration of July 9, and the federalist Juan Manuel de Rosas allowed it again, but maintained the May celebrations. By 1880, the federalization of Buenos Aires removed the local connotations and the May Revolution was considered the birth of the nation. The date, as well as a generic image of the Buenos Aires Cabildo, are used in different variants to honor the May Revolution. Two of the most notable are the Avenida de Mayo and the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, near the location of the Cabildo. The May Pyramid was erected in the Plaza a year after the revolution, and was rebuilt in its present form in 1856. Veinticinco de Mayo ("May 25") is the name of several administrative divisions, cities, public spaces and landforms of Argentina. There are departments of this name in the provinces of Chaco, Misiones, San Juan, Rio Negro and Buenos Aires, the latter holding the town of Veinticinco de Mayo. The cities of Rosario (Santa Fe), Junín (Buenos Aires) and Resistencia (Chaco) have eponymous squares. King George Island, which is claimed by Argentina, Britain and Chile, as part of the Argentine Antarctica, the British Antarctic Territory and the Chilean Antarctic Territory respectively, is referred to as Isla 25 de Mayo in Argentina. A representation of a cabildo is used on Argentine 25-cent coins, and an image of the Sun of May appears on the 5-cent coin. An image of the Cabildo during the Revolution appeared on the back of the 5-peso banknote of the former peso moneda nacional. ## See also - Chuquisaca Revolution - La Paz revolution

Raptor Red

1995 book by Robert T. Bakker

Raptor Red is a 1995 American novel by paleontologist Robert T. Bakker. The book is a third-person account of dinosaurs during the Cretaceous Period, told from the point of view of Raptor Red, a female Utahraptor. Raptor Red features many of Bakker's theories regarding dinosaurs' social habits, intelligence, and the world in which they lived. The book follows a year in Raptor Red's life as she loses her mate, finds her family, and struggles to survive in a hostile environment. Bakker drew inspiration from Ernest Thompson Seton's works that look at life through the eyes of predators, and said that he found it enjoyable to write from a top predator's perspective. Bakker based his portrayals of dinosaurs and other prehistoric wildlife on fossil evidence, as well as studies of modern animals. The book was released in hardcover, paperback, and audiobook formats. When released, Raptor Red was generally praised: Bakker's anthropomorphism was seen as a unique and positive aspect of the book. Criticisms of the novel included a perceived lack of characterization and average writing. Some scientists, such as paleontologist David B. Norman, took issue with the scientific theories portrayed in the novel, fearing that the public would accept them as fact, while Discovery Channel host Jay Ingram and others defended Bakker's creative decisions as provoking debate and bringing science to a wider audience. ## Background Paleontologist Robert T. Bakker was motivated to write Raptor Red by his interest in dinosaur behavior and his desire to marry science and entertainment, saying that, "nature is a drama. It is the most ripping yarn ever written. You've got life and death and sex and betrayal and the best way to approach it is through individual animals." According to Bakker, "It was fun to put myself in the mind of a raptor, especially since being a top predator is so challenging ... much harder than [being] a herbivore." He credited the turn-of-the-century naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton's works that focused on life from the perspectives of grizzly bears and wolves as having inspired him to write the novel from the dinosaur's point of view. Raptor Red was an attempt to introduce Utahraptor to the public, as well as explain some of Bakker's theories regarding dinosaur behavior. Bakker originally suggested the genus name Utahraptor for a new dinosaur specimen that had been found by an amateur bone-hunter in Utah. Bakker was at the time consulting with the designers of the Jurassic Park film, whose largest portrayed Velociraptor—called the "big female" in the script—was coincidentally the same size as the newly discovered specimen. One of the novel's other goals was to dispel the common perception of predators as evil and portray them as creatures to be admired and empathized with. Bakker's raptors are shown as monogamous, relatively intelligent and social creatures, an assertion he defended. "The life of dinosaurian hunters was hard. Most skeletons we excavate have clear marks of old wounds," he said. "To survive and raise their young, the predators needed more than sharp teeth and strong claws. They needed social bonds." The behavior of the raptors and other animals featured in the novel was based on a combination of fossil evidence and observations of modern animals, such as chimpanzees and alligators. Bakker also advanced his theory that an asteroid impact did not kill the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, but rather diseases spread through migration. Bakker received a large advance for the novel from Bantam Books, rumored to be in the six-figure range. The book was prominently featured at the American Booksellers' Convention in Chicago, alongside Michael Crichton's The Lost World. Coverage of the event noted that both novels were on the trailing end of the dinosaur fad fueled by Jurassic Park, as the new trend in American books was shifting toward politics in the aftermath of the 1994 US elections. Raptor Red was initially published as a mass-market paperback and hardcover book, and was later released as an audiobook by Simon & Schuster Audio, read by Megan Gallagher. Bakker's audiobook royalties—at least $34,000 by November 1995—were donated to the Tate Museum in Casper, Wyoming, where he was curator. ## Synopsis ### Setting and characters Raptor Red takes place approximately 120 million years ago, in the Early Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic. At the time, a land bridge had formed between Asia and the Americas, this allowed groups of foreign dinosaurs to invade present-day Utah; one of these foreign species is Utahraptor. Raptor Red's name comes from the symbols the dinosaur learns as a hatchling to self-identify with. Bakker gives an individual view of each species of dinosaur or ancient creature in the same style as Red's experiences; these include a baby Gastonia who instinctively attacks what it does not understand with its clubbed tail, and a whip-tailed diplodocid who enjoys beating up predators. Bakker prominently features the adventures of a "fur-ball" (mammal), Aegialodon; according to the author, the emphasis was added because the Aegialodon is on the direct ancestral line to humans. Aegialodon, however, did not live in the same time and place as Utahraptor, hailing from England about 136 million years ago. Some of the other animals featured in the novel were closer in time and place to Utahraptor but not strictly contemporary. For example, fossils attributable to Acrocanthosaurus and Deinonychus are known from the same rock formation as Utahraptor (the Cedar Mountain Formation), but from sediments about five million years younger. ### Plot In the book's opening, the title character and her mate ambush a herd of Astrodon, which are large herbivorous sauropods. The Astrodon are surprised, thinking that their bulk deters smaller predators. Utahraptor, however, are much larger than any resident raptor, and proceed to take down an Astrodon with teamwork. When Red's mate climbs onto the dead Astrodon, the corpse rolls in the mud, trapping the male under the bulk of the animal. Despite Red's best efforts, her mate suffocates. Despondent, Red wanders around the floodplain, nearly starving since a Utahraptor cannot successfully hunt big game on its own. Red follows a familiar scent and is reunited with her sister, a single mother with three chicks. The two hunt together and bring food back to the nest for the young. A white pterosaur, one Red has seen since she hatched, helps the two by finding carrion and prey in exchange for a helping of meat. On one hunting expedition, when the two adult Utahraptor are stalking a herd of Iguanodon, Red spies a young male Utahraptor that is watching their prey. He begins a courtship dance for Red, but Red's sister chases him off, hissing. Her growls agitate the Iguanodon, who stampede; the male hastily leaves. After climbing into a tree to escape a flash flood, Red encounters the male raptor again, who performs a courtship dance while hanging onto the tree branches. Red's sister begrudgingly allows the male to stay with them, provided he steers clear of her chicks. For a while, Red and her pack are happy, feeding off the plentiful carrion left by receding flood waters, but the pack's way of life is upset by an invasion of large Acrocanthosaurus, huge meat-eating dinosaurs. The added competition for food puts strain on the pack, as does the unexpected death of one of the chicks. A fight erupts between the male raptor and Red's sister. Red, torn between a prospective mate and her kin, tries to defuse the situation. Two Acrocanthosaurus watch the commotion and take the opportunity to attack the Utahraptor. Meanwhile, a Kronosaurus ambushes one of the chicks on the beach. Seeing the danger, Red lures one Acrocanthosaurus into deep water where it is dragged under by the Kronosaurus. Red saves her family, but her consort is forced away by Red's sister. Facing continued threats from the Acrocanthosaurus, Red, her sister and the chicks are forced up into the mountains. They encounter ice and snow for the first time, and kill a segnosaur in a cave, turning the den into their nest. The older chick accompanies the two adults on hunting expeditions. One day the raptors encounter a strange creature they have never seen—a whip-tailed diplodocid who inflicts wounds on Red and her sister; the older chick is forced to set off alone and find the pack's food. This calamity coincides with the arrival of a large pack of smaller raptors known as Deinonychus. They surround the nest and wait for the wounded raptors to become weak enough to attack. Red's sister dies, and Red is crippled and defenseless against the smaller dinosaurs. The Deinonychus close in but are driven back by the sudden arrival of the older Utahraptor chick and Red's consort, who defend the nest. Some time later, the old white pterosaur circles over Red's mountain stronghold, and finds the pack has grown considerably. Red and her niece have chicks of their own, who are having fun rolling down a hill. The satisfied pterosaur leaves, having found a mate as well. ## Analysis Bakker anthropomorphizes the dinosaurs in Raptor Red; the raptors and other wildlife are depicted as demonstrating intellect and emotion. Doctor Patricia E. Chu classified Raptor Red as a cinematic and modern "animal story" in the vein of previous works such as Jack London's White Fang. While the animals in Raptor Red are heavily anthropomorphized—Bakker has one dinosaur aware of its own mortality—they are also described in highly technical or technologic terms, such as describing a raptor's brain like a computer, or its imprinting through descriptions of biochemistry. ## Reception Raptor Red was favorably received by critics and the mainstream press. Much praise was given to Bakker's anthropomorphizing of the dinosaurs; a reviewer for the Toronto Star said that "Raptor Red does for dinosaurs what some nature writing does for creatures alive today: it turns data into stories. And stories are what all of us need to make these animals—even dinosaurs—come alive." Mark Nichols of Maclean's said that Bakker's success lay in making the reader hope that the dinosaurs were indeed creatures as Bakker portrayed. James Gorman, writing for Natural History, compared Bakker's heroine to a "bloody-minded Jane Austen character—bound by family ties, thoroughly responsible, yet longing for independence and love." A review in The Psychological Record recommended the book as a "conceptually-rich and controversial" explanation for dinosaur behavior. While the Library Journal's review praised Bakker's sympathetic characterization for never becoming cartoonish, other critics felt that the anthropomorphizing of the dinosaurs veered too far into exaggeration. Other criticisms included a lack of character needed for truly engrossing fiction. Reviewers described Bakker's work as genuine, despite flaws such as inconsistent writing. Billboard praised Megan Gallagher's narration of the audiobook, with its continuous sound effects and dramatic music to creating an "aural picture". Entertainment Weekly gave Raptor Red its "Best of Breed Award" for a "captivating novel about animal life". Many critical reviews of the work came from scientists who objected to Bakker's dramatic license and departure from established facts. The paleontologist Thomas Holtz noted that Bakker combined fauna in ways not directly supported by the fossil record; for example, several of the dinosaurs featured in the books lived millions of years after Utahraptor died out. Michael Taylor, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the National Museums of Scotland, panned the book, saying that "Raptor Red is an accurate portrayal only within the context of uncertainties over the reconstruction of fossil animals as living forms ... Bakker's postscript never really admits these uncertainties." David B. Norman criticized the book as "no more than a children's adventure story—and a rather poorly written one at that ... The merging of science and fantasy is at its worst in books like Raptor Red because none but the experts can disentangle fact from fiction; this type of nonsense turns an uninformed reader into a misinformed one." Jay Ingram, from the Discovery Channel, published a rebuttal, saying, "The most important point is that Bakker's portrayal of the dinosaurs in Raptor Red is vivid—vivid in a way few museum displays or factual accounts can be. And if it turns out in the long run that some of the speculation is unwarranted, who cares? Bob Bakker has given us a unique window onto the era of dinosaurs." According to Bakker, the novel's success led to interest in a movie deal from Hollywood. Producer Robert Halmi Sr. made deals with Jim Henson's Creature Shop for film adaptations of Animal Farm and Raptor Red in 1996. No official project has been announced. ## See also - The Dinosaur Heresies

Amphetamine

Central nervous system stimulant

Amphetamine (contracted from alpha-methylphenethylamine) is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant that is used in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), narcolepsy, and obesity; it is also used to treat binge eating disorder in the form of its inactive prodrug lisdexamfetamine. Amphetamine was discovered as a chemical in 1887 by Lazăr Edeleanu, and then as a drug in the late 1920s. It exists as two enantiomers: levoamphetamine and dextroamphetamine. Amphetamine properly refers to a specific chemical, the racemic free base, which is equal parts of the two enantiomers in their pure amine forms. The term is frequently used informally to refer to any combination of the enantiomers, or to either of them alone. Historically, it has been used to treat nasal congestion and depression. Amphetamine is also used as an athletic performance enhancer and cognitive enhancer, and recreationally as an aphrodisiac and euphoriant. It is a prescription drug in many countries, and unauthorized possession and distribution of amphetamine are often tightly controlled due to the significant health risks associated with recreational use. The first amphetamine pharmaceutical was Benzedrine, a brand which was used to treat a variety of conditions. Currently, pharmaceutical amphetamine is prescribed as racemic amphetamine, Adderall, dextroamphetamine, or the inactive prodrug lisdexamfetamine. Amphetamine increases monoamine and excitatory neurotransmission in the brain, with its most pronounced effects targeting the norepinephrine and dopamine neurotransmitter systems. At therapeutic doses, amphetamine causes emotional and cognitive effects such as euphoria, change in desire for sex, increased wakefulness, and improved cognitive control. It induces physical effects such as improved reaction time, fatigue resistance, decreased appetite, elevated heart rate, and increased muscle strength. Larger doses of amphetamine may impair cognitive function and induce rapid muscle breakdown. Addiction is a serious risk with heavy recreational amphetamine use, but is unlikely to occur from long-term medical use at therapeutic doses. Very high doses can result in psychosis (e.g., hallucinations, delusions and paranoia) which rarely occurs at therapeutic doses even during long-term use. Recreational doses are generally much larger than prescribed therapeutic doses and carry a far greater risk of serious side effects. Amphetamine belongs to the phenethylamine class. It is also the parent compound of its own structural class, the substituted amphetamines, which includes prominent substances such as bupropion, cathinone, MDMA, and methamphetamine. As a member of the phenethylamine class, amphetamine is also chemically related to the naturally occurring trace amine neuromodulators, specifically phenethylamine and N-methylphenethylamine, both of which are produced within the human body. Phenethylamine is the parent compound of amphetamine, while N-methylphenethylamine is a positional isomer of amphetamine that differs only in the placement of the methyl group. ## Uses ### Medical Amphetamine is used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), narcolepsy (a sleep disorder), obesity, and, in the form of lisdexamfetamine, binge eating disorder. It is sometimes prescribed off-label for its past medical indications, particularly for depression and chronic pain. #### ADHD Long-term amphetamine exposure at sufficiently high doses in some animal species is known to produce abnormal dopamine system development or nerve damage, but, in humans with ADHD, long-term use of pharmaceutical amphetamines at therapeutic doses appears to improve brain development and nerve growth. Reviews of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies suggest that long-term treatment with amphetamine decreases abnormalities in brain structure and function found in subjects with ADHD, and improves function in several parts of the brain, such as the right caudate nucleus of the basal ganglia. Reviews of clinical stimulant research have established the safety and effectiveness of long-term continuous amphetamine use for the treatment of ADHD. Randomized controlled trials of continuous stimulant therapy for the treatment of ADHD spanning 2 years have demonstrated treatment effectiveness and safety. Two reviews have indicated that long-term continuous stimulant therapy for ADHD is effective for reducing the core symptoms of ADHD (i.e., hyperactivity, inattention, and impulsivity), enhancing quality of life and academic achievement, and producing improvements in a large number of functional outcomes across 9 categories of outcomes related to academics, antisocial behavior, driving, non-medicinal drug use, obesity, occupation, self-esteem, service use (i.e., academic, occupational, health, financial, and legal services), and social function. One review highlighted a nine-month randomized controlled trial of amphetamine treatment for ADHD in children that found an average increase of 4.5 IQ points, continued increases in attention, and continued decreases in disruptive behaviors and hyperactivity. Another review indicated that, based upon the longest follow-up studies conducted to date, lifetime stimulant therapy that begins during childhood is continuously effective for controlling ADHD symptoms and reduces the risk of developing a substance use disorder as an adult. Current models of ADHD suggest that it is associated with functional impairments in some of the brain's neurotransmitter systems; these functional impairments involve impaired dopamine neurotransmission in the mesocorticolimbic projection and norepinephrine neurotransmission in the noradrenergic projections from the locus coeruleus to the prefrontal cortex. Stimulants like methylphenidate and amphetamine are effective in treating ADHD because they increase neurotransmitter activity in these systems. Approximately 80% of those who use these stimulants see improvements in ADHD symptoms. Children with ADHD who use stimulant medications generally have better relationships with peers and family members, perform better in school, are less distractible and impulsive, and have longer attention spans. The Cochrane reviews on the treatment of ADHD in children, adolescents, and adults with pharmaceutical amphetamines stated that short-term studies have demonstrated that these drugs decrease the severity of symptoms, but they have higher discontinuation rates than non-stimulant medications due to their adverse side effects. A Cochrane review on the treatment of ADHD in children with tic disorders such as Tourette syndrome indicated that stimulants in general do not make tics worse, but high doses of dextroamphetamine could exacerbate tics in some individuals. #### Binge Eating Disorder Binge eating disorder (BED) is characterized by recurrent and persistent episodes of compulsive binge eating. These episodes are often accompanied by marked distress and a feeling of loss of control over eating. The pathophysiology of BED is not fully understood, but it is believed to involve dysfunctional dopaminergic reward circuitry along the cortico-striatal-thalamic-cortical loop. As of July 2024, lisdexamfetamine is the only USFDA- and TGA-approved pharmacotherapy for BED. Evidence suggests that lisdexamfetamine's treatment efficacy in BED is underpinned at least in part by a psychopathological overlap between BED and ADHD, with the latter conceptualized as a cognitive control disorder that also benefits from treatment with lisdexamfetamine. Lisdexamfetamine's therapeutic effects for BED primarily involve direct action in the central nervous system after conversion to its pharmacologically active metabolite, dextroamphetamine. Centrally, dextroamphetamine increases neurotransmitter activity of dopamine and norepinephrine in prefrontal cortical regions that regulate cognitive control of behavior. Similar to its therapeutic effect in ADHD, dextroamphetamine enhances cognitive control and may reduce impulsivity in patients with BED by enhancing the cognitive processes responsible for overriding prepotent feeding responses that precede binge eating episodes. In addition, dextroamphetamine's actions outside of the central nervous system may also contribute to its treatment effects in BED. Peripherally, dextroamphetamine triggers lipolysis through noradrenergic signaling in adipose fat cells, leading to the release of triglycerides into blood plasma to be utilized as a fuel substrate. Dextroamphetamine also activates TAAR1 in peripheral organs along the gastrointestinal tract that are involved in the regulation of food intake and body weight. Together, these actions confer an anorexigenic effect that promotes satiety in response to feeding and may decrease binge eating as a secondary effect. Medical reviews of randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that lisdexamfetamine, at doses between 50–70 mg, is safe and effective for the treatment of moderate-to-severe BED in adults. These reviews suggest that lisdexamfetamine is persistently effective at treating BED and is associated with significant reductions in the number of binge eating days and binge eating episodes per week. Furthermore, a meta-analytic systematic review highlighted an open-label, 12-month extension safety and tolerability study that reported lisdexamfetamine remained effective at reducing the number of binge eating days for the duration of the study. In addition, both a review and a meta-analytic systematic review found lisdexamfetamine to be superior to placebo in several secondary outcome measures, including persistent binge eating cessation, reduction of obsessive-compulsive related binge eating symptoms, reduction of body-weight, and reduction of triglycerides. Lisdexamfetamine, like all pharmaceutical amphetamines, has direct appetite suppressant effects that may be therapeutically useful in both BED and its comorbidities. Based on reviews of neuroimaging studies involving BED-diagnosed participants, therapeautic neuroplasticity in dopaminergic and noradrenergic pathways from long-term use of lisdexamfetamine may be implicated in lasting improvements in the regulation of eating behaviors that are observed even after the drug is discontinued. #### Narcolepsy Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep-wake disorder that is associated with excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy, and sleep paralysis. Patients with narcolepsy are diagnosed as either type 1 or type 2, with only the former presenting cataplexy symptoms. Type 1 narcolepsy results from the loss of approximately 70,000 orexin-releasing neurons in the lateral hypothalamus, leading to significantly reduced cerebrospinal orexin levels; this reduction is a diagnostic biomarker for type 1 narcolepsy. Lateral hypothalamic orexin neurons innervate every component of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS), which includes noradrenergic, dopaminergic, histaminergic, and serotonergic nuclei that promote wakefulness. Amphetamine’s therapeutic mode of action in narcolepsy primarily involves increasing monoamine neurotransmitter activity in the ARAS. This includes noradrenergic neurons in the locus coeruleus, dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area, histaminergic neurons in the tuberomammillary nucleus, and serotonergic neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus. Dextroamphetamine, the more dopaminergic enantiomer of amphetamine, is particularly effective at promoting wakefulness because dopamine release has the greatest influence on cortical activation and cognitive arousal, relative to other monoamines. In contrast, levoamphetamine may have a greater effect on cataplexy, a symptom more sensitive to the effects of norepinephrine and serotonin. Noradrenergic and serotonergic nuclei in the ARAS are involved in the regulation of the REM sleep cycle and function as "REM-off" cells, with amphetamine's effect on norepinephrine and serotonin contributing to the suppression of REM sleep and a possible reduction of cataplexy at high doses. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) 2021 clinical practice guideline conditionally recommends dextroamphetamine for the treatment of both type 1 and type 2 narcolepsy. Treatment with pharmaceutical amphetamines is generally less preferred relative to other stimulants (e.g., modafinil) and is considered a third-line treatment option. Medical reviews indicate that amphetamine is safe and effective for the treatment of narcolepsy. Amphetamine appears to be most effective at improving symptoms associated with hypersomnolence, with three reviews finding clinically significant reductions in daytime sleepiness in patients with narcolepsy. Additionally, these reviews suggest that amphetamine may dose-dependently improve cataplexy symptoms. However, the quality of evidence for these findings is low and is consequently reflected in the AASM's conditional recommendation for dextroamphetamine as a treatment option for narcolepsy. ### Enhancing performance #### Cognitive performance In 2015, a systematic review and a meta-analysis of high quality clinical trials found that, when used at low (therapeutic) doses, amphetamine produces modest yet unambiguous improvements in cognition, including working memory, long-term episodic memory, inhibitory control, and some aspects of attention, in normal healthy adults; these cognition-enhancing effects of amphetamine are known to be partially mediated through the indirect activation of both dopamine D₁ receptor and α₂-adrenergic receptor in the prefrontal cortex. A systematic review from 2014 found that low doses of amphetamine also improve memory consolidation, in turn leading to improved recall of information. Therapeutic doses of amphetamine also enhance cortical network efficiency, an effect which mediates improvements in working memory in all individuals. Amphetamine and other ADHD stimulants also improve task saliency (motivation to perform a task) and increase arousal (wakefulness), in turn promoting goal-directed behavior. Stimulants such as amphetamine can improve performance on difficult and boring tasks and are used by some students as a study and test-taking aid. Based upon studies of self-reported illicit stimulant use, 5–35% of college students use diverted ADHD stimulants, which are primarily used for enhancement of academic performance rather than as recreational drugs. However, high amphetamine doses that are above the therapeutic range can interfere with working memory and other aspects of cognitive control. #### Physical performance Amphetamine is used by some athletes for its psychological and athletic performance-enhancing effects, such as increased endurance and alertness; however, non-medical amphetamine use is prohibited at sporting events that are regulated by collegiate, national, and international anti-doping agencies. In healthy people at oral therapeutic doses, amphetamine has been shown to increase muscle strength, acceleration, athletic performance in anaerobic conditions, and endurance (i.e., it delays the onset of fatigue), while improving reaction time. Amphetamine improves endurance and reaction time primarily through reuptake inhibition and release of dopamine in the central nervous system. Amphetamine and other dopaminergic drugs also increase power output at fixed levels of perceived exertion by overriding a "safety switch", allowing the core temperature limit to increase in order to access a reserve capacity that is normally off-limits. At therapeutic doses, the adverse effects of amphetamine do not impede athletic performance; however, at much higher doses, amphetamine can induce effects that severely impair performance, such as rapid muscle breakdown and elevated body temperature. ### Recreational Amphetamine, specifically the more dopaminergic dextrorotatory enantiomer (dextroamphetamine), is also used recreationally as a euphoriant and aphrodisiac, and like other amphetamines; is used as a club drug for its energetic and euphoric high. Dextroamphetamine (d-amphetamine) is considered to have a high potential for misuse in a recreational manner since individuals typically report feeling euphoric, more alert, and more energetic after taking the drug. A notable part of the 1960s mod subculture in the UK was recreational amphetamine use, which was used to fuel all-night dances at clubs like Manchester's Twisted Wheel. Newspaper reports described dancers emerging from clubs at 5 a.m. with dilated pupils. Mods used the drug for stimulation and alertness, which they viewed as different from the intoxication caused by alcohol and other drugs. Dr. Andrew Wilson argues that for a significant minority, "amphetamines symbolised the smart, on-the-ball, cool image" and that they sought "stimulation not intoxication [...] greater awareness, not escape" and "confidence and articulacy" rather than the "drunken rowdiness of previous generations." Dextroamphetamine's dopaminergic (rewarding) properties affect the mesocorticolimbic circuit; a group of neural structures responsible for incentive salience (i.e., "wanting"; desire or craving for a reward and motivation), positive reinforcement and positively-valenced emotions, particularly ones involving pleasure. Large recreational doses of dextroamphetamine may produce symptoms of dextroamphetamine overdose. Recreational users sometimes open dexedrine capsules and crush the contents in order to insufflate (snort) it or subsequently dissolve it in water and inject it. Immediate-release formulations have higher potential for abuse via insufflation (snorting) or intravenous injection due to a more favorable pharmacokinetic profile and easy crushability (especially tablets). Injection into the bloodstream can be dangerous because insoluble fillers within the tablets can block small blood vessels. Chronic overuse of dextroamphetamine can lead to severe drug dependence, resulting in withdrawal symptoms when drug use stops. ## Contraindications According to the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), amphetamine is contraindicated in people with a history of drug abuse, cardiovascular disease, severe agitation, or severe anxiety. It is also contraindicated in individuals with advanced arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), glaucoma (increased eye pressure), hyperthyroidism (excessive production of thyroid hormone), or moderate to severe hypertension. These agencies indicate that people who have experienced allergic reactions to other stimulants or who are taking monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) should not take amphetamine, although safe concurrent use of amphetamine and monoamine oxidase inhibitors has been documented. These agencies also state that anyone with anorexia nervosa, bipolar disorder, depression, hypertension, liver or kidney problems, mania, psychosis, Raynaud's phenomenon, seizures, thyroid problems, tics, or Tourette syndrome should monitor their symptoms while taking amphetamine. Evidence from human studies indicates that therapeutic amphetamine use does not cause developmental abnormalities in the fetus or newborns (i.e., it is not a human teratogen), but amphetamine abuse does pose risks to the fetus. Amphetamine has also been shown to pass into breast milk, so the IPCS and the FDA advise mothers to avoid breastfeeding when using it. Due to the potential for reversible growth impairments, the FDA advises monitoring the height and weight of children and adolescents prescribed an amphetamine pharmaceutical. ## Adverse effects The adverse side effects of amphetamine are many and varied, and the amount of amphetamine used is the primary factor in determining the likelihood and severity of adverse effects. Amphetamine products such as Adderall, Dexedrine, and their generic equivalents are currently approved by the U.S. FDA for long-term therapeutic use. Recreational use of amphetamine generally involves much larger doses, which have a greater risk of serious adverse drug effects than dosages used for therapeutic purposes. ### Physical Cardiovascular side effects can include hypertension or hypotension from a vasovagal response, Raynaud's phenomenon (reduced blood flow to the hands and feet), and tachycardia (increased heart rate). Sexual side effects in males may include erectile dysfunction, frequent erections, or prolonged erections. Gastrointestinal side effects may include abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, and nausea. Other potential physical side effects include appetite loss, blurred vision, dry mouth, excessive grinding of the teeth, nosebleed, profuse sweating, rhinitis medicamentosa (drug-induced nasal congestion), reduced seizure threshold, tics (a type of movement disorder), and weight loss. Dangerous physical side effects are rare at typical pharmaceutical doses. Amphetamine stimulates the medullary respiratory centers, producing faster and deeper breaths. In a normal person at therapeutic doses, this effect is usually not noticeable, but when respiration is already compromised, it may be evident. Amphetamine also induces contraction in the urinary bladder sphincter, the muscle which controls urination, which can result in difficulty urinating. This effect can be useful in treating bed wetting and loss of bladder control. The effects of amphetamine on the gastrointestinal tract are unpredictable. If intestinal activity is high, amphetamine may reduce gastrointestinal motility (the rate at which content moves through the digestive system); however, amphetamine may increase motility when the smooth muscle of the tract is relaxed. Amphetamine also has a slight analgesic effect and can enhance the pain relieving effects of opioids. FDA-commissioned studies from 2011 indicate that in children, young adults, and adults there is no association between serious adverse cardiovascular events (sudden death, heart attack, and stroke) and the medical use of amphetamine or other ADHD stimulants. However, amphetamine pharmaceuticals are contraindicated in individuals with cardiovascular disease. ### Psychological At normal therapeutic doses, the most common psychological side effects of amphetamine include increased alertness, apprehension, concentration, initiative, self-confidence and sociability, mood swings (elated mood followed by mildly depressed mood), insomnia or wakefulness, and decreased sense of fatigue. Less common side effects include anxiety, change in libido, grandiosity, irritability, repetitive or obsessive behaviors, and restlessness; these effects depend on the user's personality and current mental state. Amphetamine psychosis (e.g., delusions and paranoia) can occur in heavy users. Although very rare, this psychosis can also occur at therapeutic doses during long-term therapy. According to the FDA, "there is no systematic evidence" that stimulants produce aggressive behavior or hostility. Amphetamine has also been shown to produce a conditioned place preference in humans taking therapeutic doses, meaning that individuals acquire a preference for spending time in places where they have previously used amphetamine. ### Reinforcement disorders #### Addiction Addiction is a serious risk with heavy recreational amphetamine use, but is unlikely to occur from long-term medical use at therapeutic doses; in fact, lifetime stimulant therapy for ADHD that begins during childhood reduces the risk of developing substance use disorders as an adult. Pathological overactivation of the mesolimbic pathway, a dopamine pathway that connects the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens, plays a central role in amphetamine addiction. Individuals who frequently self-administer high doses of amphetamine have a high risk of developing an amphetamine addiction, since chronic use at high doses gradually increases the level of accumbal ΔFosB, a "molecular switch" and "master control protein" for addiction. Once nucleus accumbens ΔFosB is sufficiently overexpressed, it begins to increase the severity of addictive behavior (i.e., compulsive drug-seeking) with further increases in its expression. While there are currently no effective drugs for treating amphetamine addiction, regularly engaging in sustained aerobic exercise appears to reduce the risk of developing such an addiction. Exercise therapy improves clinical treatment outcomes and may be used as an adjunct therapy with behavioral therapies for addiction. #### Biomolecular mechanisms Chronic use of amphetamine at excessive doses causes alterations in gene expression in the mesocorticolimbic projection, which arise through transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms. The most important transcription factors that produce these alterations are Delta FBJ murine osteosarcoma viral oncogene homolog B (ΔFosB), cAMP response element binding protein (CREB), and nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB). ΔFosB is the most significant biomolecular mechanism in addiction because ΔFosB overexpression (i.e., an abnormally high level of gene expression which produces a pronounced gene-related phenotype) in the D1-type medium spiny neurons in the nucleus accumbens is necessary and sufficient for many of the neural adaptations and regulates multiple behavioral effects (e.g., reward sensitization and escalating drug self-administration) involved in addiction. Once ΔFosB is sufficiently overexpressed, it induces an addictive state that becomes increasingly more severe with further increases in ΔFosB expression. It has been implicated in addictions to alcohol, cannabinoids, cocaine, methylphenidate, nicotine, opioids, phencyclidine, propofol, and substituted amphetamines, among others. ΔJunD, a transcription factor, and G9a, a histone methyltransferase enzyme, both oppose the function of ΔFosB and inhibit increases in its expression. Sufficiently overexpressing ΔJunD in the nucleus accumbens with viral vectors can completely block many of the neural and behavioral alterations seen in chronic drug abuse (i.e., the alterations mediated by ΔFosB). Similarly, accumbal G9a hyperexpression results in markedly increased histone 3 lysine residue 9 dimethylation (H3K9me2) and blocks the induction of ΔFosB-mediated neural and behavioral plasticity by chronic drug use, which occurs via H3K9me2-mediated repression of transcription factors for ΔFosB and H3K9me2-mediated repression of various ΔFosB transcriptional targets (e.g., CDK5). ΔFosB also plays an important role in regulating behavioral responses to natural rewards, such as palatable food, sex, and exercise. Since both natural rewards and addictive drugs induce the expression of ΔFosB (i.e., they cause the brain to produce more of it), chronic acquisition of these rewards can result in a similar pathological state of addiction. Consequently, ΔFosB is the most significant factor involved in both amphetamine addiction and amphetamine-induced sexual addictions, which are compulsive sexual behaviors that result from excessive sexual activity and amphetamine use. These sexual addictions are associated with a dopamine dysregulation syndrome which occurs in some patients taking dopaminergic drugs. The effects of amphetamine on gene regulation are both dose- and route-dependent. Most of the research on gene regulation and addiction is based upon animal studies with intravenous amphetamine administration at very high doses. The few studies that have used equivalent (weight-adjusted) human therapeutic doses and oral administration show that these changes, if they occur, are relatively minor. This suggests that medical use of amphetamine does not significantly affect gene regulation. ##### Pharmacological treatments As of December 2019, there is no effective pharmacotherapy for amphetamine addiction. Reviews from 2015 and 2016 indicated that TAAR1-selective agonists have significant therapeutic potential as a treatment for psychostimulant addictions; however, as of February 2016, the only compounds which are known to function as TAAR1-selective agonists are experimental drugs. Amphetamine addiction is largely mediated through increased activation of dopamine receptors and co-localized NMDA receptors in the nucleus accumbens; magnesium ions inhibit NMDA receptors by blocking the receptor calcium channel. One review suggested that, based upon animal testing, pathological (addiction-inducing) psychostimulant use significantly reduces the level of intracellular magnesium throughout the brain. Supplemental magnesium treatment has been shown to reduce amphetamine self-administration (i.e., doses given to oneself) in humans, but it is not an effective monotherapy for amphetamine addiction. A systematic review and meta-analysis from 2019 assessed the efficacy of 17 different pharmacotherapies used in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for amphetamine and methamphetamine addiction; it found only low-strength evidence that methylphenidate might reduce amphetamine or methamphetamine self-administration. There was low- to moderate-strength evidence of no benefit for most of the other medications used in RCTs, which included antidepressants (bupropion, mirtazapine, sertraline), antipsychotics (aripiprazole), anticonvulsants (topiramate, baclofen, gabapentin), naltrexone, varenicline, citicoline, ondansetron, prometa, riluzole, atomoxetine, dextroamphetamine, and modafinil. ##### Behavioral treatments A 2018 systematic review and network meta-analysis of 50 trials involving 12 different psychosocial interventions for amphetamine, methamphetamine, or cocaine addiction found that combination therapy with both contingency management and community reinforcement approach had the highest efficacy (i.e., abstinence rate) and acceptability (i.e., lowest dropout rate). Other treatment modalities examined in the analysis included monotherapy with contingency management or community reinforcement approach, cognitive behavioral therapy, 12-step programs, non-contingent reward-based therapies, psychodynamic therapy, and other combination therapies involving these. Additionally, research on the neurobiological effects of physical exercise suggests that daily aerobic exercise, especially endurance exercise (e.g., marathon running), prevents the development of drug addiction and is an effective adjunct therapy (i.e., a supplemental treatment) for amphetamine addiction. Exercise leads to better treatment outcomes when used as an adjunct treatment, particularly for psychostimulant addictions. In particular, aerobic exercise decreases psychostimulant self-administration, reduces the reinstatement (i.e., relapse) of drug-seeking, and induces increased dopamine receptor D₂ (DRD2) density in the striatum. This is the opposite of pathological stimulant use, which induces decreased striatal DRD2 density. One review noted that exercise may also prevent the development of a drug addiction by altering ΔFosB or c-Fos immunoreactivity in the striatum or other parts of the reward system. #### Dependence and withdrawal Drug tolerance develops rapidly in amphetamine abuse (i.e., recreational amphetamine use), so periods of extended abuse require increasingly larger doses of the drug in order to achieve the same effect. According to a Cochrane review on withdrawal in individuals who compulsively use amphetamine and methamphetamine, "when chronic heavy users abruptly discontinue amphetamine use, many report a time-limited withdrawal syndrome that occurs within 24 hours of their last dose." This review noted that withdrawal symptoms in chronic, high-dose users are frequent, occurring in roughly 88% of cases, and persist for 3–4 weeks with a marked "crash" phase occurring during the first week. Amphetamine withdrawal symptoms can include anxiety, drug craving, depressed mood, fatigue, increased appetite, increased movement or decreased movement, lack of motivation, sleeplessness or sleepiness, and lucid dreams. The review indicated that the severity of withdrawal symptoms is positively correlated with the age of the individual and the extent of their dependence. Mild withdrawal symptoms from the discontinuation of amphetamine treatment at therapeutic doses can be avoided by tapering the dose. ## Overdose An amphetamine overdose can lead to many different symptoms, but is rarely fatal with appropriate care. The severity of overdose symptoms increases with dosage and decreases with drug tolerance to amphetamine. Tolerant individuals have been known to take as much as 5 grams of amphetamine in a day, which is roughly 100 times the maximum daily therapeutic dose. Symptoms of a moderate and extremely large overdose are listed below; fatal amphetamine poisoning usually also involves convulsions and coma. In 2013, overdose on amphetamine, methamphetamine, and other compounds implicated in an "amphetamine use disorder" resulted in an estimated 3,788 deaths worldwide (3,425–4,145 deaths, 95% confidence). ### Toxicity In rodents and primates, sufficiently high doses of amphetamine cause dopaminergic neurotoxicity, or damage to dopamine neurons, which is characterized by dopamine terminal degeneration and reduced transporter and receptor function. There is no evidence that amphetamine is directly neurotoxic in humans. However, large doses of amphetamine may indirectly cause dopaminergic neurotoxicity as a result of hyperpyrexia, the excessive formation of reactive oxygen species, and increased autoxidation of dopamine. Animal models of neurotoxicity from high-dose amphetamine exposure indicate that the occurrence of hyperpyrexia (i.e., core body temperature ≥ 40 °C) is necessary for the development of amphetamine-induced neurotoxicity. Prolonged elevations of brain temperature above 40 °C likely promote the development of amphetamine-induced neurotoxicity in laboratory animals by facilitating the production of reactive oxygen species, disrupting cellular protein function, and transiently increasing blood–brain barrier permeability. ### Psychosis An amphetamine overdose can result in a stimulant psychosis that may involve a variety of symptoms, such as delusions and paranoia. A Cochrane review on treatment for amphetamine, dextroamphetamine, and methamphetamine psychosis states that about 5–15% of users fail to recover completely. According to the same review, there is at least one trial that shows antipsychotic medications effectively resolve the symptoms of acute amphetamine psychosis. Psychosis rarely arises from therapeutic use. ## Drug interactions Many types of substances are known to interact with amphetamine, resulting in altered drug action or metabolism of amphetamine, the interacting substance, or both. Inhibitors of enzymes that metabolize amphetamine (e.g., CYP2D6 and FMO3) will prolong its elimination half-life, meaning that its effects will last longer. Amphetamine also interacts with MAOIs, particularly monoamine oxidase A inhibitors, since both MAOIs and amphetamine increase plasma catecholamines (i.e., norepinephrine and dopamine); therefore, concurrent use of both is dangerous. Amphetamine modulates the activity of most psychoactive drugs. In particular, amphetamine may decrease the effects of sedatives and depressants and increase the effects of stimulants and antidepressants. Amphetamine may also decrease the effects of antihypertensives and antipsychotics due to its effects on blood pressure and dopamine respectively. Zinc supplementation may reduce the minimum effective dose of amphetamine when it is used for the treatment of ADHD. In general, there is no significant interaction when consuming amphetamine with food, but the pH of gastrointestinal content and urine affects the absorption and excretion of amphetamine, respectively. Acidic substances reduce the absorption of amphetamine and increase urinary excretion, and alkaline substances do the opposite. Due to the effect pH has on absorption, amphetamine also interacts with gastric acid reducers such as proton pump inhibitors and H₂ antihistamines, which increase gastrointestinal pH (i.e., make it less acidic). ## Pharmacology ### Pharmacodynamics Amphetamine exerts its behavioral effects by altering the use of monoamines as neuronal signals in the brain, primarily in catecholamine neurons in the reward and executive function pathways of the brain. The concentrations of the main neurotransmitters involved in reward circuitry and executive functioning, dopamine and norepinephrine, increase dramatically in a dose-dependent manner by amphetamine because of its effects on monoamine transporters. The reinforcing and motivational salience-promoting effects of amphetamine are due mostly to enhanced dopaminergic activity in the mesolimbic pathway. The euphoric and locomotor-stimulating effects of amphetamine are dependent upon the magnitude and speed by which it increases synaptic dopamine and norepinephrine concentrations in the striatum. Amphetamine has been identified as a potent full agonist of trace amine-associated receptor 1 (TAAR1), a G_s-coupled and G_q-coupled G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) discovered in 2001, which is important for regulation of brain monoamines. Activation of TAAR1 increases production via adenylyl cyclase activation and inhibits monoamine transporter function. Monoamine autoreceptors (e.g., D₂ short, presynaptic α₂, and presynaptic 5-HT_1A) have the opposite effect of TAAR1, and together these receptors provide a regulatory system for monoamines. Notably, amphetamine and trace amines possess high binding affinities for TAAR1, but not for monoamine autoreceptors. Imaging studies indicate that monoamine reuptake inhibition by amphetamine and trace amines is site specific and depends upon the presence of TAAR1 co-localization in the associated monoamine neurons. In addition to the neuronal monoamine transporters, amphetamine also inhibits both vesicular monoamine transporters, VMAT1 and VMAT2, as well as SLC1A1, SLC22A3, and SLC22A5. SLC1A1 is excitatory amino acid transporter 3 (EAAT3), a glutamate transporter located in neurons, SLC22A3 is an extraneuronal monoamine transporter that is present in astrocytes, and SLC22A5 is a high-affinity carnitine transporter. Amphetamine is known to strongly induce cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript (CART) gene expression, a neuropeptide involved in feeding behavior, stress, and reward, which induces observable increases in neuronal development and survival in vitro. The CART receptor has yet to be identified, but there is significant evidence that CART binds to a unique G_i/G_o-coupled GPCR. Amphetamine also inhibits monoamine oxidases at very high doses, resulting in less monoamine and trace amine metabolism and consequently higher concentrations of synaptic monoamines. In humans, the only post-synaptic receptor at which amphetamine is known to bind is the 5-HT1A receptor, where it acts as an agonist with low micromolar affinity. The full profile of amphetamine's short-term drug effects in humans is mostly derived through increased cellular communication or neurotransmission of dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, epinephrine, histamine, CART peptides, endogenous opioids, adrenocorticotropic hormone, corticosteroids, and glutamate, which it affects through interactions with CART, 5-HT1A, EAAT3, TAAR1, VMAT1, VMAT2, and possibly other biological targets. Amphetamine also activates seven human carbonic anhydrase enzymes, several of which are expressed in the human brain. Dextroamphetamine is a more potent agonist of TAAR1 than levoamphetamine. Consequently, dextroamphetamine produces greater CNS stimulation than levoamphetamine, roughly three to four times more, but levoamphetamine has slightly stronger cardiovascular and peripheral effects. #### Dopamine In certain brain regions, amphetamine increases the concentration of dopamine in the synaptic cleft. Amphetamine can enter the presynaptic neuron either through DAT or by diffusing across the neuronal membrane directly. As a consequence of DAT uptake, amphetamine produces competitive reuptake inhibition at the transporter. Upon entering the presynaptic neuron, amphetamine activates TAAR1 which, through protein kinase A (PKA) and protein kinase C (PKC) signaling, causes DAT phosphorylation. Phosphorylation by either protein kinase can result in DAT internalization (non-competitive reuptake inhibition), but PKC-mediated phosphorylation alone induces the reversal of dopamine transport through DAT (i.e., dopamine efflux). Amphetamine is also known to increase intracellular calcium, an effect which is associated with DAT phosphorylation through an unidentified Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase (CAMK)-dependent pathway, in turn producing dopamine efflux. Through direct activation of G protein-coupled inwardly-rectifying potassium channels, TAAR1 reduces the firing rate of dopamine neurons, preventing a hyper-dopaminergic state. Amphetamine is also a substrate for the presynaptic vesicular monoamine transporter, VMAT2. Following amphetamine uptake at VMAT2, amphetamine induces the collapse of the vesicular pH gradient, which results in the release of dopamine molecules from synaptic vesicles into the cytosol via dopamine efflux through VMAT2. Subsequently, the cytosolic dopamine molecules are released from the presynaptic neuron into the synaptic cleft via reverse transport at DAT. #### Norepinephrine Similar to dopamine, amphetamine dose-dependently increases the level of synaptic norepinephrine, the direct precursor of epinephrine. Based upon neuronal TAAR1 mRNA expression, amphetamine is thought to affect norepinephrine analogously to dopamine. In other words, amphetamine induces TAAR1-mediated efflux and non-competitive reuptake inhibition at phosphorylated NET, competitive NET reuptake inhibition, and norepinephrine release from VMAT2. #### Serotonin Amphetamine exerts analogous, yet less pronounced, effects on serotonin as on dopamine and norepinephrine. Amphetamine affects serotonin via VMAT2 and, like norepinephrine, is thought to phosphorylate SERT via TAAR1. Like dopamine, amphetamine has low, micromolar affinity at the human 5-HT1A receptor. #### Other neurotransmitters, peptides, hormones, and enzymes Acute amphetamine administration in humans increases endogenous opioid release in several brain structures in the reward system. Extracellular levels of glutamate, the primary excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain, have been shown to increase in the striatum following exposure to amphetamine. This increase in extracellular glutamate presumably occurs via the amphetamine-induced internalization of EAAT3, a glutamate reuptake transporter, in dopamine neurons. Amphetamine also induces the selective release of histamine from mast cells and efflux from histaminergic neurons through VMAT2. Acute amphetamine administration can also increase adrenocorticotropic hormone and corticosteroid levels in blood plasma by stimulating the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. In December 2017, the first study assessing the interaction between amphetamine and human carbonic anhydrase enzymes was published; of the eleven carbonic anhydrase enzymes it examined, it found that amphetamine potently activates seven, four of which are highly expressed in the human brain, with low nanomolar through low micromolar activating effects. Based upon preclinical research, cerebral carbonic anhydrase activation has cognition-enhancing effects; but, based upon the clinical use of carbonic anhydrase inhibitors, carbonic anhydrase activation in other tissues may be associated with adverse effects, such as ocular activation exacerbating glaucoma. ### Pharmacokinetics The oral bioavailability of amphetamine varies with gastrointestinal pH; it is well absorbed from the gut, and bioavailability is typically 90%. Amphetamine is a weak base with a pK_a of 9.9; consequently, when the pH is basic, more of the drug is in its lipid soluble free base form, and more is absorbed through the lipid-rich cell membranes of the gut epithelium. Conversely, an acidic pH means the drug is predominantly in a water-soluble cationic (salt) form, and less is absorbed. Approximately 20% of amphetamine circulating in the bloodstream is bound to plasma proteins. Following absorption, amphetamine readily distributes into most tissues in the body, with high concentrations occurring in cerebrospinal fluid and brain tissue. The half-lives of amphetamine enantiomers differ and vary with urine pH. At normal urine pH, the half-lives of dextroamphetamine and levoamphetamine are 9–11 hours and 11–14 hours, respectively. Highly acidic urine will reduce the enantiomer half-lives to 7 hours; highly alkaline urine will increase the half-lives up to 34 hours. The immediate-release and extended release variants of salts of both isomers reach peak plasma concentrations at 3 hours and 7 hours post-dose respectively. Amphetamine is eliminated via the kidneys, with 30–40% of the drug being excreted unchanged at normal urinary pH. When the urinary pH is basic, amphetamine is in its free base form, so less is excreted. When urine pH is abnormal, the urinary recovery of amphetamine may range from a low of 1% to a high of 75%, depending mostly upon whether urine is too basic or acidic, respectively. Following oral administration, amphetamine appears in urine within 3 hours. Roughly 90% of ingested amphetamine is eliminated 3 days after the last oral dose. CYP2D6, dopamine β-hydroxylase (DBH), flavin-containing monooxygenase 3 (FMO3), butyrate-CoA ligase (XM-ligase), and glycine N-acyltransferase (GLYAT) are the enzymes known to metabolize amphetamine or its metabolites in humans. Amphetamine has a variety of excreted metabolic products, including 4-hydroxyamphetamine, 4-hydroxynorephedrine, 4-hydroxyphenylacetone, benzoic acid, hippuric acid, norephedrine, and phenylacetone. Among these metabolites, the active sympathomimetics are 4-hydroxyamphetamine, 4-hydroxynorephedrine, and norephedrine. The main metabolic pathways involve aromatic para-hydroxylation, aliphatic alpha- and beta-hydroxylation, N-oxidation, N-dealkylation, and deamination. The known metabolic pathways, detectable metabolites, and metabolizing enzymes in humans include the following: ### Pharmacomicrobiomics The human metagenome (i.e., the genetic composition of an individual and all microorganisms that reside on or within the individual's body) varies considerably between individuals. Since the total number of microbial and viral cells in the human body (over 100 trillion) greatly outnumbers human cells (tens of trillions), there is considerable potential for interactions between drugs and an individual's microbiome, including: drugs altering the composition of the human microbiome, drug metabolism by microbial enzymes modifying the drug's pharmacokinetic profile, and microbial drug metabolism affecting a drug's clinical efficacy and toxicity profile. The field that studies these interactions is known as pharmacomicrobiomics. Similar to most biomolecules and other orally administered xenobiotics (i.e., drugs), amphetamine is predicted to undergo promiscuous metabolism by human gastrointestinal microbiota (primarily bacteria) prior to absorption into the blood stream. The first amphetamine-metabolizing microbial enzyme, tyramine oxidase from a strain of E. coli commonly found in the human gut, was identified in 2019. This enzyme was found to metabolize amphetamine, tyramine, and phenethylamine with roughly the same binding affinity for all three compounds. ### Related endogenous compounds Amphetamine has a very similar structure and function to the endogenous trace amines, which are naturally occurring neuromodulator molecules produced in the human body and brain. Among this group, the most closely related compounds are phenethylamine, the parent compound of amphetamine, and N-methylphenethylamine, a structural isomer of amphetamine (i.e., it has an identical molecular formula). In humans, phenethylamine is produced directly from L-phenylalanine by the aromatic amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) enzyme, which converts L-DOPA into dopamine as well. In turn, N-methylphenethylamine is metabolized from phenethylamine by phenylethanolamine N-methyltransferase, the same enzyme that metabolizes norepinephrine into epinephrine. Like amphetamine, both phenethylamine and N-methylphenethylamine regulate monoamine neurotransmission via TAAR1; unlike amphetamine, both of these substances are broken down by monoamine oxidase B, and therefore have a shorter half-life than amphetamine. ## Chemistry Amphetamine is a methyl homolog of the mammalian neurotransmitter phenethylamine with the chemical formula C₉H₁₃N. The carbon atom adjacent to the primary amine is a stereogenic center, and amphetamine is composed of a racemic 1:1 mixture of two enantiomers. This racemic mixture can be separated into its optical isomers: levoamphetamine and dextroamphetamine. At room temperature, the pure free base of amphetamine is a mobile, colorless, and volatile liquid with a characteristically strong amine odor, and acrid, burning taste. Frequently prepared solid salts of amphetamine include amphetamine adipate, aspartate, hydrochloride, phosphate, saccharate, sulfate, and tannate. Dextroamphetamine sulfate is the most common enantiopure salt. Amphetamine is also the parent compound of its own structural class, which includes a number of psychoactive derivatives. In organic chemistry, amphetamine is an excellent chiral ligand for the stereoselective synthesis of 1,1'-bi-2-naphthol. ### Substituted derivatives The substituted derivatives of amphetamine, or "substituted amphetamines", are a broad range of chemicals that contain amphetamine as a "backbone"; specifically, this chemical class includes derivative compounds that are formed by replacing one or more hydrogen atoms in the amphetamine core structure with substituents. The class includes amphetamine itself, stimulants like methamphetamine, serotonergic empathogens like MDMA, and decongestants like ephedrine, among other subgroups. ### Synthesis Since the first preparation was reported in 1887, numerous synthetic routes to amphetamine have been developed. The most common route of both legal and illicit amphetamine synthesis employs a non-metal reduction known as the Leuckart reaction (method 1). In the first step, a reaction between phenylacetone and formamide, either using additional formic acid or formamide itself as a reducing agent, yields N-formylamphetamine. This intermediate is then hydrolyzed using hydrochloric acid, and subsequently basified, extracted with organic solvent, concentrated, and distilled to yield the free base. The free base is then dissolved in an organic solvent, sulfuric acid added, and amphetamine precipitates out as the sulfate salt. A number of chiral resolutions have been developed to separate the two enantiomers of amphetamine. For example, racemic amphetamine can be treated with d-tartaric acid to form a diastereoisomeric salt which is fractionally crystallized to yield dextroamphetamine. Chiral resolution remains the most economical method for obtaining optically pure amphetamine on a large scale. In addition, several enantioselective syntheses of amphetamine have been developed. In one example, optically pure (R)-1-phenyl-ethanamine is condensed with phenylacetone to yield a chiral Schiff base. In the key step, this intermediate is reduced by catalytic hydrogenation with a transfer of chirality to the carbon atom alpha to the amino group. Cleavage of the benzylic amine bond by hydrogenation yields optically pure dextroamphetamine. A large number of alternative synthetic routes to amphetamine have been developed based on classic organic reactions. One example is the Friedel–Crafts alkylation of benzene by allyl chloride to yield beta chloropropylbenzene which is then reacted with ammonia to produce racemic amphetamine (method 2). Another example employs the Ritter reaction (method 3). In this route, allylbenzene is reacted acetonitrile in sulfuric acid to yield an organosulfate which in turn is treated with sodium hydroxide to give amphetamine via an acetamide intermediate. A third route starts with ethyl 3-oxobutanoate which through a double alkylation with methyl iodide followed by benzyl chloride can be converted into 2-methyl-3-phenyl-propanoic acid. This synthetic intermediate can be transformed into amphetamine using either a Hofmann or Curtius rearrangement (method 4). A significant number of amphetamine syntheses feature a reduction of a nitro, imine, oxime, or other nitrogen-containing functional groups. In one such example, a Knoevenagel condensation of benzaldehyde with nitroethane yields phenyl-2-nitropropene. The double bond and nitro group of this intermediate is reduced using either catalytic hydrogenation or by treatment with lithium aluminium hydride (method 5). Another method is the reaction of phenylacetone with ammonia, producing an imine intermediate that is reduced to the primary amine using hydrogen over a palladium catalyst or lithium aluminum hydride (method 6). ### Detection in body fluids Amphetamine is frequently measured in urine or blood as part of a drug test for sports, employment, poisoning diagnostics, and forensics. Techniques such as immunoassay, which is the most common form of amphetamine test, may cross-react with a number of sympathomimetic drugs. Chromatographic methods specific for amphetamine are employed to prevent false positive results. Chiral separation techniques may be employed to help distinguish the source of the drug, whether prescription amphetamine, prescription amphetamine prodrugs, (e.g., selegiline), over-the-counter drug products that contain levomethamphetamine, or illicitly obtained substituted amphetamines. Several prescription drugs produce amphetamine as a metabolite, including benzphetamine, clobenzorex, famprofazone, fenproporex, lisdexamfetamine, mesocarb, methamphetamine, prenylamine, and selegiline, among others. These compounds may produce positive results for amphetamine on drug tests. Amphetamine is generally only detectable by a standard drug test for approximately 24 hours, although a high dose may be detectable for 2–4 days. For the assays, a study noted that an enzyme multiplied immunoassay technique (EMIT) assay for amphetamine and methamphetamine may produce more false positives than liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) of amphetamine and methamphetamine with the derivatizing agent (S)-(−)-trifluoroacetylprolyl chloride allows for the detection of methamphetamine in urine. GC–MS of amphetamine and methamphetamine with the chiral derivatizing agent Mosher's acid chloride allows for the detection of both dextroamphetamine and dextromethamphetamine in urine. Hence, the latter method may be used on samples that test positive using other methods to help distinguish between the various sources of the drug. ## History, society, and culture Amphetamine was first synthesized in 1887 in Germany by Romanian chemist Lazăr Edeleanu who named it phenylisopropylamine; its stimulant effects remained unknown until 1927, when it was independently resynthesized by Gordon Alles and reported to have sympathomimetic properties. Amphetamine had no medical use until late 1933, when Smith, Kline and French began selling it as an inhaler under the brand name Benzedrine as a decongestant. Benzedrine sulfate was introduced 3 years later and was used to treat a wide variety of medical conditions, including narcolepsy, obesity, low blood pressure, low libido, and chronic pain, among others. During World War II, amphetamine and methamphetamine were used extensively by both the Allied and Axis forces for their stimulant and performance-enhancing effects. As the addictive properties of the drug became known, governments began to place strict controls on the sale of amphetamine. For example, during the early 1970s in the United States, amphetamine became a schedule II controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act. In spite of strict government controls, amphetamine has been used legally or illicitly by people from a variety of backgrounds, including authors, musicians, mathematicians, and athletes. Amphetamine is still illegally synthesized today in clandestine labs and sold on the black market, primarily in European countries. Among European Union (EU) member states in 2018, 11.9 million adults of ages 15–64 have used amphetamine or methamphetamine at least once in their lives and 1.7 million have used either in the last year. During 2012, approximately 5.9 metric tons of illicit amphetamine were seized within EU member states; the "street price" of illicit amphetamine within the EU ranged from €6–38 per gram during the same period. Outside Europe, the illicit market for amphetamine is much smaller than the market for methamphetamine and MDMA. ### Legal status As a result of the United Nations 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, amphetamine became a schedule II controlled substance, as defined in the treaty, in all 183 state parties. Consequently, it is heavily regulated in most countries. Some countries, such as South Korea and Japan, have banned substituted amphetamines even for medical use. In other nations, such as Brazil (class A3), Canada (schedule I drug), the Netherlands (List I drug), the United States (schedule II drug), Australia (schedule 8), Thailand (category 1 narcotic), and United Kingdom (class B drug), amphetamine is in a restrictive national drug schedule that allows for its use as a medical treatment. ### Pharmaceutical products Several currently marketed amphetamine formulations contain both enantiomers, including those marketed under the brand names Adderall, Adderall XR, Mydayis, Adzenys ER, Adzenys XR-ODT, Dyanavel XR, Evekeo, and Evekeo ODT. Of those, Evekeo (including Evekeo ODT) is the only product containing only racemic amphetamine (as amphetamine sulfate), and is therefore the only one whose active moiety can be accurately referred to simply as "amphetamine". Dextroamphetamine, marketed under the brand names Dexedrine and Zenzedi, is the only enantiopure amphetamine product currently available. A prodrug form of dextroamphetamine, lisdexamfetamine, is also available and is marketed under the brand name Vyvanse. As it is a prodrug, lisdexamfetamine is structurally different from dextroamphetamine, and is inactive until it metabolizes into dextroamphetamine. The free base of racemic amphetamine was previously available as Benzedrine, Psychedrine, and Sympatedrine. Levoamphetamine was previously available as Cydril. Many current amphetamine pharmaceuticals are salts due to the comparatively high volatility of the free base. However, oral suspension and orally disintegrating tablet (ODT) dosage forms composed of the free base were introduced in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Some of the current brands and their generic equivalents are listed below. ## Reference notes

Augustus

First Roman emperor from 27 BC to AD 14

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian (), was the founder of the Roman Empire. He reigned as the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. The reign of Augustus initiated an imperial cult, as well as an era of imperial peace (the Pax Romana or Pax Augusta) in which the Roman world was largely free of armed conflict. The Principate system of government was established during his reign and lasted until the Crisis of the Third Century. Octavian was born into an equestrian branch of the plebeian gens Octavia. His maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, and Octavian was named in Caesar's will as his adopted son and heir; as a result, he inherited Caesar's name, estate, and the loyalty of his legions. He, Mark Antony, and Marcus Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate to defeat the assassins of Caesar. Following their victory at the Battle of Philippi (42 BC), the Triumvirate divided the Roman Republic among themselves and ruled as de facto dictators. The Triumvirate was eventually torn apart by the competing ambitions of its members; Lepidus was exiled in 36 BC, and Antony was defeated by Octavian at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. Antony and his wife Cleopatra, the Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, killed themselves during Octavian's invasion of Egypt, which then became a Roman province. After the demise of the Second Triumvirate, Augustus restored the outward facade of the free republic, with governmental power vested in the Roman Senate, the executive magistrates and the legislative assemblies, yet he maintained autocratic authority by having the Senate grant him lifetime tenure as commander-in-chief, tribune and censor. A similar ambiguity is seen in his chosen names, the implied rejection of monarchical titles whereby he called himself Princeps Civitatis ('First Citizen') juxtaposed with his adoption of the title Augustus. Augustus dramatically enlarged the empire, annexing Egypt, Dalmatia, Pannonia, Noricum, and Raetia, expanding possessions in Africa, and completing the conquest of Hispania, but he suffered a major setback in Germania. Beyond the frontiers, he secured the empire with a buffer region of client states and made peace with the Parthian Empire through diplomacy. He reformed the Roman system of taxation, developed networks of roads with an official courier system, established a standing army, established the Praetorian Guard as well as official police and fire-fighting services for Rome, and rebuilt much of the city during his reign. Augustus died in AD 14 at age 75, probably from natural causes. Persistent rumors, substantiated somewhat by deaths in the imperial family, have claimed his wife Livia poisoned him. He was succeeded as emperor by his adopted son Tiberius, Livia's son and former husband of Augustus's only biological child, Julia. ## Name As a consequence of Roman customs, society, and personal preference, Augustus (/ɔːˈɡʌstəs/ aw-GUST-əs) was known by many names throughout his life: - Gaius Octavius (/ɒkˈteɪviəs/ ok-TAY-vee-əs, ). According to Suetonius, the cognomen Thurinus (, "of Thurii") was added to his birth name as a toddler in 60 BC. Later, after he had taken the name of Caesar, his rival Mark Antony referred to him as "Thurinus" in order to belittle him. In response, he merely said he was surprised that "using his old name was thought to be an insult". - Gaius Julius Caesar After his adoption by Julius Caesar on the latter's death in 44 BC, he took Caesar's nomen and cognomen. He was often distinguished by historians from his adoptive father by the addition "Octavianus" () after the name, denoting that he was a former member of the gens Octavia in conformance with Roman naming conventions. There is no evidence that Augustus did this himself, although Cicero seems to have (see below). In English he is mainly known by the anglicisation "Octavian" (/ɒkˈteɪviən/ ok-TAY-vee-ən) for the period between 44 and 27 BC. - Imperator Caesar "Commander-in-Chief Caesar". Octavian's early coins and inscriptions all refer to him simply as Gaius Caesar, but by 38 BC he had replaced "Gaius" with the victory title imperator ("commander"). The use of imperator signified a permanent link to the Roman tradition of victory. He transformed Caesar, a cognomen for one branch of the Julian family, into a new family line that began with him. Occasionally the epithet divi filius or divi Iuli(i) filius ("son of the divine Julius") was included, alluding to Julius Caesar's deification in 42 BC. - Imperator Caesar Augustus On 16 January 27 BC, partly on his own insistence, the Roman Senate granted him the honorific Augustus () (see below). Historians use this name to refer to him from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. The name is sometimes given as "Augustus Caesar". Also included at times is the epithet divi filius and the title Pater Patriae. ## Early life He was born in Rome on 23 September 63 BC. His paternal family was from the Volscian town of Velletri, approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) south-east of the city. He was born at Ox Head, a small property on the Palatine Hill, very close to the Roman Forum. In his childhood, he received the cognomen "Thurinus", possibly commemorating his father's victory at Thurii over a rebellious band of slaves which occurred a few years after his birth. Suetonius wrote: "There are many indications that the Octavian family was in days of old a distinguished one at Velitrae; for not only was a street in the most frequented part of town long ago called Octavius, but an altar was shown there besides, consecrated by an Octavius. This man was leader in a war with a neighbouring town ..." Due to the crowded nature of Rome at the time, Octavian was taken to his father's home village at Velletri to be raised. Octavian mentions his father's equestrian family only briefly in his memoirs. His paternal great-grandfather Octavius was a military tribune in Sicily during the Second Punic War. His grandfather had served in several local political offices. His father, also named Octavius, had been governor of Macedonia. His mother, Atia, was the niece of Julius Caesar. His father died in 59 BC when Octavian was four years old. His mother married a former governor of Syria, Lucius Marcius Philippus. Philippus claimed descent from Alexander the Great and was elected consul in 56 BC. Philippus never had much of an interest in young Octavian. Because of this, Octavian was raised by his grandmother, Julia, the sister of Julius Caesar. Julia died in 52 or 51 BC, and Octavian delivered the funeral oration for his grandmother. From this point, his mother and stepfather took a more active role in raising him. He donned the toga virilis ("toga of manhood") four years later and was elected to the College of Pontiffs in 47 BC. The following year he was put in charge of the Greek games that were staged in honour of the Temple of Venus Genetrix, built by Julius Caesar. According to Nicolaus of Damascus, Octavian wished to join Caesar's staff for his campaign in Africa but gave way when his mother protested. In 46 BC, she consented for him to join Caesar in Hispania, where he planned to fight the forces of Pompey, Caesar's late enemy, but Octavian fell ill and was unable to travel. When he had recovered, he sailed to the front but was shipwrecked. After coming ashore with a handful of companions, he crossed hostile territory to Caesar's camp, which impressed Caesar considerably. Velleius Paterculus reports that after that time, Caesar allowed the young man to share his carriage. When back in Rome, Caesar deposited a new will with the Vestal Virgins, naming Octavian as the prime beneficiary. ## Rise to power ### Heir to Caesar Octavian was studying and undergoing military training in Apollonia, Illyria, when Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March (15 March) 44 BC. He rejected the advice of some army officers to take refuge with the troops in Macedonia and sailed to Italy to ascertain whether he had any potential political fortunes or security. Caesar had no living legitimate children under Roman law and so had adopted Octavian, his grand-nephew, in his will, making him his primary heir. Mark Antony later charged that Octavian had earned his adoption by Caesar through sexual favours, though Suetonius describes Antony's accusation as political slander. This form of slander was popular during this time in the Roman Republic to demean and discredit political opponents by accusing them of having an inappropriate sexual affair. After landing at Lupiae near Brundisium, Octavian learned the contents of Caesar's will, and only then did he decide to become Caesar's political heir as well as heir to two-thirds of his estate. Upon his adoption, Octavian assumed his great-uncle's name Gaius Julius Caesar. Roman citizens adopted into a new family usually retained their old nomen in cognomen form (e.g., Octavianus for one who had been an Octavius, Aemilianus for one who had been an Aemilius, etc. see Roman naming conventions for adoptions). However, though some of his contemporaries did, there is no evidence that Octavian officially used the name Octavianus, as it would have made his adoptive origins too obvious. Historians usually refer to the new Caesar as "Octavian" during the time between his adoption and his assumption of the name Augustus in 27 BC in order to avoid confusing the dead dictator with his heir. Octavian could not rely on his limited funds to make a successful entry into the upper echelons of the Roman political hierarchy. After a warm welcome by Caesar's soldiers at Brundisium, Octavian demanded a portion of the funds that were allotted by Caesar for the intended war against the Parthian Empire in the Middle East. This amounted to 700 million sesterces stored at Brundisium, the staging ground in Italy for military operations in the east. A later senatorial investigation into the disappearance of the public funds took no action against Octavian since he subsequently used that money to raise troops against the Senate's archenemy Mark Antony. Octavian made another bold move in 44 BC when, without official permission, he appropriated the annual tribute that had been sent from Rome's Near Eastern province to Italy. Octavian began to bolster his personal forces with Caesar's veteran legionaries and with troops designated for the Parthian war, gathering support by emphasizing his status as heir to Caesar. On his march to Rome through Italy, Octavian's presence and newly acquired funds attracted many, winning over Caesar's former veterans stationed in Campania. By June, he had gathered an army of 3,000 loyal veterans, paying each a bonus of 500 denarii. ### Growing tensions Arriving in Rome on 6 May 44 BC, Octavian found consul Mark Antony, Caesar's former colleague, in an uneasy truce with the dictator's assassins. They had been granted a general amnesty on 17 March, yet Antony had succeeded in driving most of them out of Rome with an inflammatory eulogy at Caesar's funeral, mounting public opinion against the assassins. Mark Antony was amassing political support, but Octavian still had the opportunity to rival him as the leading member of the faction supporting Caesar. Antony had lost the support of many Romans and supporters of Caesar when he initially opposed the motion to elevate Caesar to divine status. It is alleged that Antony refused to hand over the money due Octavian as Caesar's adopted heir, possibly on grounds that it would take time to disentangle it from state funds. During the summer, Octavian won the support of Caesarian veterans and also made common cause with those senators—many of whom were themselves former Caesarians—who perceived Antony as a threat to the state. After an abortive attempt by the veterans to reconcile Octavian and Antony, Antony's bellicose edicts against Brutus and Cassius alienated him from the moderate Caesarians in the Senate, who feared a renewed civil war. In September, Marcus Tullius Cicero began to attack Antony in a series of speeches portraying him as a threat to the republican order. ### First conflict with Antony With opinion in Rome turning against him and his year of consular power nearing its end, Antony attempted to pass laws that would assign him the province of Cisalpine Gaul. Octavian meanwhile built up a private army in Italy by recruiting Caesarian veterans, and on 28 November he won over two of Antony's legions with the enticing offer of monetary gain. In the face of Octavian's large and capable force, Antony saw the danger of staying in Rome and, to the relief of the Senate, he left Rome for Cisalpine Gaul, which was to be handed to him on 1 January. However, the province had earlier been assigned to Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, one of Caesar's assassins, who now refused to yield to Antony. Antony besieged him at Mutina and rejected the resolutions passed by the Senate to stop the fighting. The Senate had no army to enforce their resolutions. This provided an opportunity for Octavian, who already was known to have armed forces. Cicero also defended Octavian against Antony's taunts about Octavian's lack of noble lineage and aping of Julius Caesar's name, stating "we have no more brilliant example of traditional piety among our youth." At the urging of Cicero, the Senate inducted Octavian as senator on 1 January 43 BC, yet he also was given the power to vote alongside the former consuls. In addition, Octavian was granted imperium pro praetore (commanding power) which legalized his command of troops, sending him to relieve the siege along with Hirtius and Pansa (the consuls for 43 BC). He assumed the fasces on 7 January, a date that he would later commemorate as the beginning of his public career. Antony's forces were defeated at the battles of Forum Gallorum (14 April) and Mutina (21 April), forcing Antony to retreat to Transalpine Gaul. Both consuls were killed, however, leaving Octavian in sole command of their armies. These victories earned him his first acclamation as imperator, a title reserved for victorious commanders. The Senate heaped many more rewards on Decimus Brutus than on Octavian for defeating Antony, then attempted to give command of the consular legions to Decimus Brutus. In response, Octavian stayed in the Po Valley and refused to aid any further offensive against Antony. In July, an embassy of centurions sent by Octavian entered Rome and demanded the consulship left vacant by Hirtius and Pansa and also that the decree should be rescinded which declared Antony a public enemy. When this was refused, he marched on the city with eight legions. He encountered no military opposition in Rome and on 19 August 43 BC was elected consul with his relative Quintus Pedius as co-consul. Meanwhile, Antony formed an alliance with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, another leading Caesarian. ### Second Triumvirate #### Proscriptions In a meeting near Bononia in October 43 BC, Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate. Their powers were made official by the Senate on 27 November. This explicit arrogation of special powers lasting five years was then legalised by law passed by the plebs, unlike the unofficial First Triumvirate formed by Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Marcus Licinius Crassus. The triumvirs then set in motion proscriptions, in which between 130 and 300 senators and 2,000 equites were branded as outlaws and deprived of their property and, for those who failed to escape, their lives. This decree issued by the triumvirate was motivated in part by a need to raise money to pay the salaries of their troops for the upcoming conflict against Caesar's assassins, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Rewards for their arrest gave incentive for Romans to capture those proscribed, while the assets and properties of those arrested were seized by the triumvirs. Contemporary Roman historians provide conflicting reports as to which triumvir was most responsible for the proscriptions and killing. However, the sources agree that enacting the proscriptions was a means by all three factions to eliminate political enemies. Marcus Velleius Paterculus asserted that Octavian tried to avoid proscribing officials whereas Lepidus and Antony were to blame for initiating them. Cassius Dio defended Octavian as trying to spare as many as possible, whereas Antony and Lepidus, being older and involved in politics longer, had many more enemies to deal with. This claim was rejected by Appian, who maintained that Octavian shared an equal interest with Lepidus and Antony in eradicating his enemies. Suetonius said that Octavian was reluctant to proscribe officials but did pursue his enemies with more vigor than the other triumvirs. Plutarch described the proscriptions as a ruthless and cutthroat swapping of friends and family among Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian. For example, Octavian allowed the proscription of his ally Cicero, Antony the proscription of his maternal uncle Lucius Julius Caesar (the consul of 64 BC), and Lepidus his brother Paullus. #### Battle of Philippi and division of territory On 1 January 42 BC, the Senate posthumously recognised Julius Caesar as a divinity of the Roman state, divus Iulius. Octavian was able to further his cause by emphasizing the fact that he was divi filius, "Son of the Divine". Antony and Octavian then sent twenty-eight legions by sea to face the armies of Brutus and Cassius, who had built their base of power in Greece. After two battles at Philippi in Macedonia in October 42, the Caesarian army was victorious and Brutus and Cassius committed suicide. Mark Antony later used the examples of these battles as a means to belittle Octavian, as both battles were decisively won with the use of Antony's forces. In addition to claiming responsibility for both victories, Antony branded Octavian as a coward for handing over his direct military control to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa instead. After Philippi, a new territorial arrangement was made among the members of the Second Triumvirate. Gaul and the province of Hispania were placed in the hands of Octavian. Antony travelled east to Egypt where he allied himself with Queen Cleopatra, the former lover of Julius Caesar and mother of Caesar's son Caesarion. Lepidus was left with the province of Africa, stymied by Antony, who conceded Hispania to Octavian instead. Octavian was left to decide where in Italy to settle the tens of thousands of veterans of the Macedonian campaign, whom the triumvirs had promised to discharge. The tens of thousands who had fought on the republican side with Brutus and Cassius could easily ally with a political opponent of Octavian if not appeased, and they also required land. There was no more government-controlled land to allot as settlements for their soldiers, so Octavian had to choose one of two options: alienating many Roman citizens by confiscating their land, or alienating many Roman soldiers who could mount a considerable opposition against him in the Roman heartland. Octavian chose the former. There were as many as eighteen Roman towns affected by the new settlements, with entire populations driven out or at least given partial evictions. #### Rebellion and marriage alliances There was widespread dissatisfaction with Octavian over these settlements of his soldiers, and this encouraged many to rally at the side of Lucius Antonius, who was brother of Mark Antony and supported by a majority in the Senate. Meanwhile, Octavian asked for a divorce from Claudia, the daughter of Fulvia (Antony's wife) and her first husband Publius Clodius Pulcher. He returned Claudia to her mother, claiming that their marriage had never been consummated. Fulvia decided to take action. Together with Lucius Antonius, she raised an army in Italy to fight for Antony's rights against Octavian. Lucius and Fulvia took a political and martial gamble in opposing Octavian however, since the Roman army still depended on the triumvirs for their salaries. Lucius and his allies ended up in a defensive siege at Perusia, where Octavian forced them into surrender in early 40 BC. Lucius and his army were spared because of his kinship with Antony, the strongman of the East, while Fulvia was exiled to Sicyon. Octavian showed no mercy, however, for the mass of allies loyal to Lucius. On 15 March, the anniversary of Julius Caesar's assassination, he had 300 Roman senators and equestrians executed for allying with Lucius. Perusia also was pillaged and burned as a warning for others. This bloody event sullied Octavian's reputation and was criticised by many, such as Augustan poet Sextus Propertius. Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompey and still a renegade general, following Julius Caesar's victory over his father, had established himself in Sicily and Sardinia as part of an agreement reached with the Second Triumvirate in 39 BC. Both Antony and Octavian were vying for an alliance with Pompeius. Octavian succeeded in a temporary alliance in 40 BC when he married Scribonia, a sister (or daughter) of Pompeius's father-in-law Lucius Scribonius Libo. Scribonia gave birth to Octavian's only natural child, Julia, the same day that he divorced her to marry Livia Drusilla, little more than a year after their marriage. While in Egypt, Antony had been engaged in an affair with Cleopatra and had fathered three children with her. Aware of his deteriorating relationship with Octavian, Antony left Cleopatra; he sailed to Italy in 40 BC with a large force to oppose Octavian, laying siege to Brundisium. This new conflict proved untenable for both Octavian and Antony, however. Their centurions, who had become important figures politically, refused to fight because of their Caesarian cause, while the legions under their command followed suit. Meanwhile, in Sicyon, Antony's wife Fulvia died of a sudden illness while Antony was en route to meet her. Fulvia's death and the mutiny of their centurions allowed the two remaining triumvirs to effect a reconciliation. In the autumn of 40, Octavian and Antony approved the Treaty of Brundisium, by which Lepidus would remain in Africa, Antony in the East, Octavian in the West. The Italian Peninsula was left open to all for the recruitment of soldiers, but in reality this provision was useless for Antony in the East. To further cement relations of alliance with Antony, Octavian gave his sister, Octavia Minor, in marriage to Antony in late 40 BC. #### War with Sextus Pompeius Sextus Pompeius threatened Octavian in Italy by denying shipments of grain through the Mediterranean Sea to the peninsula. Pompeius's own son was put in charge as naval commander in the effort to cause widespread famine in Italy. Pompeius's control over the sea prompted him to take on the name Neptuni filius, "son of Neptune". A temporary peace agreement was reached in 39 BC with the Pact of Misenum; the blockade on Italy was lifted once Octavian granted Pompeius Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, and the Peloponnese, and ensured him a future position as consul for 35 BC. The territorial agreement between the triumvirate and Sextus Pompeius began to crumble once Octavian divorced Scribonia and married Livia on 17 January 38 BC. One of Pompeius's naval commanders betrayed him and handed over Corsica and Sardinia to Octavian. Octavian lacked the resources to confront Pompeius alone, so an agreement was reached with the Second Triumvirate's extension for another five-year period beginning in 37 BC. In supporting Octavian, Antony expected to gain support for his own campaign against the Parthian Empire, desiring to avenge Rome's defeat at Carrhae in 53 BC. In an agreement reached at Tarentum, Antony provided 120 ships for Octavian to use against Pompeius, while Octavian was to send 20,000 legionaries to Antony for use against Parthia. Octavian sent only a tenth of those promised, which Antony viewed as an intentional provocation. Octavian and Lepidus launched a joint operation against Sextus in Sicily in 36 BC. Despite setbacks for Octavian, the naval fleet of Sextus Pompeius was almost entirely destroyed on 3 September by General Agrippa at the naval battle of Naulochus. Sextus fled to the east with his remaining forces, where he was captured and executed in Miletus by one of Antony's generals the following year. As Lepidus and Octavian accepted the surrender of Pompeius's troops, Lepidus attempted to claim Sicily for himself, ordering Octavian to leave. Lepidus's troops deserted him, however, and defected to Octavian since they were weary of fighting and were enticed by Octavian's promises of money. Lepidus surrendered to Octavian and was permitted to retain the office of pontifex maximus (head of the college of priests) but was ejected from the Triumvirate. His public career at an end, he effectively was exiled to a villa at Cape Circei in Italy. The Roman dominions were divided between Octavian in the West and Antony in the East. Octavian ensured Rome's citizens of their rights to property in order to maintain peace and stability in his portion of the empire. This time, he settled his discharged soldiers outside of Italy, while also returning 30,000 slaves to their former Roman owners—slaves who had fled to join Pompeius's army and navy. Octavian had the Senate grant him, his wife, and his sister tribunal immunity, or sacrosanctitas, in order to ensure his own safety and that of Livia and Octavia once he returned to Rome. #### War with Antony and Cleopatra Meanwhile, Antony's campaign turned disastrous against Parthia, tarnishing his image as a leader, and the mere 2,000 legionaries sent by Octavian to Antony were hardly enough to replenish his forces. On the other hand, Cleopatra could restore his army to full strength; he already was engaged in a romantic affair with her, so he decided to send Octavia back to Rome. Octavian used this to spread propaganda implying that Antony was becoming less than Roman because he rejected a legitimate Roman spouse for an "Oriental paramour". In 36 BC, Octavian used a political ploy to make himself look less autocratic and Antony more the villain by proclaiming that the civil wars were coming to an end and that he would step down as triumvir—if only Antony would do the same. Antony refused. Roman troops captured the Kingdom of Armenia in 34 BC, and Antony made his son Alexander Helios the ruler of Armenia. He also awarded the title "Queen of Kings" to Cleopatra, acts that Octavian used to convince the Roman Senate that Antony had ambitions to diminish the preeminence of Rome. Octavian became consul once again on 1 January 33 BC, and he opened the following session in the Senate with a vehement attack on Antony's grants of titles and territories to his relatives and to his queen. The breach between Antony and Octavian prompted a large portion of the senators, as well as both of that year's consuls, to leave Rome and defect to Antony. However, Octavian received two key deserters from Antony in the autumn of 32 BC: Munatius Plancus and Marcus Titius. These defectors gave Octavian the information that he needed to confirm with the Senate all the accusations that he made against Antony. Octavian forcibly entered the temple of the Vestal Virgins and seized Antony's secret will, which he promptly publicized. The will would have given away Roman-conquered territories as kingdoms for his sons to rule and designated Alexandria as the site for a tomb for him and his queen. In late 32 BC, the Senate officially revoked Antony's powers as consul and declared war on Cleopatra's regime in Egypt. In early 31 BC, Antony and Cleopatra were temporarily stationed in Greece when Octavian gained a preliminary victory: the navy successfully ferried troops across the Adriatic Sea under the command of Agrippa. Agrippa cut off Antony and Cleopatra's main force from their supply routes at sea, while Octavian landed on the mainland opposite the island of Corcyra (modern Corfu) and marched south. Trapped on land and sea, deserters of Antony's army fled to Octavian's side daily while Octavian's forces were comfortable enough to make preparations. Antony's fleet sailed through the bay of Actium on the western coast of Greece in a desperate attempt to break free of the naval blockade. It was there that Antony's fleet faced the much larger fleet of smaller, more maneuverable ships under commanders Agrippa and Gaius Sosius in the Battle of Actium on 2 September 31 BC. Antony and his remaining forces were spared by a last-ditch effort from Cleopatra's fleet that had been waiting nearby. A year later, Octavian defeated their forces in Alexandria on 1 August 30 BC—after which Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide. Antony fell on his own sword and was taken by his soldiers back to Alexandria where he died in Cleopatra's arms. Cleopatra died soon after by poisoning, contrary to the popular belief that she was bitten by an asp. Octavian had exploited his position as Caesar's heir to further his own political career, and he was well aware of the dangers in allowing another person to do the same. He therefore followed the advice of the Greek philosopher Arius Didymus that "two Caesars are one too many", ordering Caesarion killed while sparing Cleopatra's children by Antony, with the exception of Antony's older son. Octavian had previously shown little mercy to surrendered enemies and acted in ways that had proven unpopular with the Roman people, yet he was given credit for pardoning many of his opponents after the Battle of Actium. ## Sole ruler of Rome After Actium and the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian was in a position to rule the entire republic under an unofficial principate—but he had to achieve this through incremental power gains. He did so by courting the Senate and the people while upholding the republican traditions of Rome, appearing that he was not aspiring to dictatorship or monarchy. Marching into Rome, Octavian and Agrippa were elected as consuls by the Senate. Years of civil war had left Rome in a state of near lawlessness, but the republic was not prepared to accept the control of Octavian as a despot. At the same time, Octavian could not give up his authority without risking further civil wars among the Roman generals, and even if he desired no position of authority his position demanded that he look to the well-being of the city of Rome and the Roman provinces. Octavian's aims from this point forward were to return Rome to a state of stability, traditional legality, and civility by lifting the overt political pressure imposed on the courts of law and ensuring free elections—in name at least. ### First settlement On 13 January 27 BC, Octavian made a show of returning full power to the Roman Senate and relinquishing his control of the Roman provinces and their armies. Under his consulship, however, the Senate had little power in initiating legislation by introducing bills for senatorial debate. Octavian was no longer in direct control of the provinces and their armies, but he retained the loyalty of active duty soldiers and veterans alike. The careers of many clients and adherents depended on his patronage, as his financial power was unrivaled in the Roman Republic. Historian Werner Eck states: > The sum of his power derived first of all from various powers of office delegated to him by the Senate and people, secondly from his immense private fortune, and thirdly from numerous patron-client relationships he established with individuals and groups throughout the Empire. All of them taken together formed the basis of his auctoritas, which he himself emphasized as the foundation of his political actions. To a large extent, the public was aware of the vast financial resources that Octavian commanded. He failed to encourage enough senators to finance the building and maintenance of networks of roads in Italy in 20 BC, but he undertook direct responsibility for them. This was publicized on the Roman currency issued in 16 BC, after he donated vast amounts of money to the aerarium Saturni, the public treasury. According to historian H. H. Scullard, however, Octavian's power was based on the exercise of "a predominant military power and ... the ultimate sanction of his authority was force, however much the fact was disguised." The Senate proposed to Octavian, the victor of Rome's civil wars, that he once again assume command of the provinces. The Senate's proposal was a ratification of Octavian's extra-constitutional power. Through the Senate, Octavian was able to continue the appearance of a still-functional constitution. Feigning reluctance, he accepted a ten-year responsibility of overseeing provinces that were considered chaotic. The provinces ceded to Augustus for that ten-year period comprised much of the conquered Roman world, including all of Hispania and Gaul, Syria, Cilicia, Cyprus, and Egypt. Moreover, command of these provinces provided Octavian with control over the majority of Rome's legions. While Octavian acted as consul in Rome, he dispatched senators to the provinces under his command as his representatives to manage provincial affairs and ensure that his orders were carried out. The provinces not under Octavian's control were overseen by governors chosen by the Roman Senate. Octavian became the most powerful political figure in the city of Rome and in most of its provinces, but he did not have a monopoly on political and martial power. The Senate still controlled North Africa, an important regional producer of grain, as well as Illyria and Macedonia, two strategic regions with several legions. However, the Senate had control of only five or six legions distributed among three senatorial proconsuls, compared to the twenty legions under the control of Octavian, and their control of these regions did not amount to any political or military challenge to Octavian. The Senate's control over some of the Roman provinces helped maintain a republican facade for the autocratic principate. Also, Octavian's control of entire provinces followed republican-era precedents for the objective of securing peace and creating stability, in which such prominent Romans as Pompey had been granted similar military powers in times of crisis and instability. ### Change to Augustus On 16 January 27 BC the Senate gave Octavian the new title of augustus. Augustus is from the Latin word augere (meaning "to increase") and can be translated as "illustrious one" or "sublime". It was a title of religious authority rather than political one, and it indicated that Octavian now approached divinity. His name of Augustus was also more favourable than Romulus, the previous one which he styled for himself in reference to the story of the legendary founder of Rome, which symbolised a second founding of Rome. The title of Romulus was associated too strongly with notions of monarchy and kingship, an image that Octavian tried to avoid. The Senate also confirmed his position as princeps senatus, which originally meant the member of the Senate with the highest precedence, but in this case it became an almost regnal title for a leader who was first in charge. The honorific augustus was inherited by all future emperors and became the de facto main title of the emperor. As a result, modern historians usually regard this event as the beginning of his reign as "emperor". Augustus himself appears to have reckoned his "reign" from 27 BC. Augustus styled himself as Imperator Caesar divi filius, "Commander Caesar son of the deified one". With this title, he boasted his familial link to deified Julius Caesar, and the use of imperator signified a permanent link to the Roman tradition of victory. He transformed Caesar, a cognomen for one branch of the Julian family, into a new family line that began with him. Augustus was granted the right to hang the corona civica (civic crown) above his door and to have laurels drape his doorposts. However, he renounced flaunting insignia of power such as holding a scepter, wearing a diadem, or wearing the golden crown and purple toga of his predecessor Julius Caesar. If he refused to symbolize his power by donning and bearing these items on his person, the Senate nonetheless awarded him with a golden shield displayed in the meeting hall of the Curia, bearing the inscription virtus, pietas, clementia, iustitia – "valor, piety, clemency, and justice." ### Second settlement By 23 BC, some of the un-republican implications were becoming apparent concerning the settlement of 27 BC. Augustus's retention of an annual consulate drew attention to his de facto dominance over the Roman political system and cut in half the opportunities for others to achieve what was still nominally the preeminent position in the Roman state. Further, he was causing political problems by desiring to have his nephew Marcus Claudius Marcellus follow in his footsteps and eventually assume the principate in his turn, alienating his three greatest supporters: Agrippa, Maecenas, and Livia. He appointed noted republican Calpurnius Piso (who had fought against Julius Caesar and supported Cassius and Brutus) as co-consul in 23 BC, after his choice Aulus Terentius Varro Murena died unexpectedly. In the late spring Augustus had a severe illness and on his supposed deathbed made arrangements that would ensure the continuation of the principate in some form, while allaying senators' suspicions of his anti-republicanism. Augustus prepared to hand down his signet ring to his favored general Agrippa. However, Augustus handed over to his co-consul Piso all of his official documents, an account of public finances, and authority over listed troops in the provinces while Augustus's supposedly favored nephew Marcellus came away empty-handed. This was a surprise to many who believed Augustus would have named an heir to his position as an unofficial emperor. Augustus bestowed only properties and possessions to his designated heirs, as an obvious system of institutionalized imperial inheritance would have provoked resistance and hostility among the republican-minded Romans fearful of monarchy. With regards to the principate, it was obvious to Augustus that Marcellus was not ready to take on his position; nonetheless, by giving his signet ring to Agrippa, Augustus intended to signal to the legions that Agrippa was to be his successor and that they should continue to obey Agrippa, constitutional procedure notwithstanding. Soon after his bout of illness subsided, Augustus gave up his consulship. The only other times Augustus would serve as consul would be in the years 5 and 2 BC, both times to introduce his grandsons into public life. This was a clever ploy by Augustus; ceasing to serve as one of two annually elected consuls allowed aspiring senators a better chance to attain the consular position while allowing Augustus to exercise wider patronage within the senatorial class. Although Augustus had resigned as consul, he desired to retain his consular imperium not just in his provinces but throughout the empire. This desire, as well as the Marcus Primus affair, led to a second compromise between him and the Senate known as the second settlement. The primary reasons for the second settlement were as follows. First, after Augustus relinquished the annual consulship, he was no longer in an official position to rule the state, yet his dominant position remained unchanged over his Roman, 'imperial' provinces where he was still a proconsul. When he annually held the office of consul, he had the power to intervene with the affairs of the other provincial proconsuls appointed by the Senate throughout the empire, when he deemed necessary. A second problem later arose showing the need for the second settlement in what became known as the "Marcus Primus affair". In late 24 or early 23 BC, charges were brought against Marcus Primus, the former proconsul (governor) of Macedonia, for waging a war without prior approval of the Senate on the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace, whose king was a Roman ally. He was defended by Lucius Licinius Varro Murena who told the trial that his client had received specific instructions from Augustus ordering him to attack the client state. Later, Primus testified that the orders came from the recently deceased Marcellus. Such orders, had they been given, would have been considered a breach of the Senate's prerogative under the constitutional settlement of 27 BC and its aftermath—i.e., before Augustus was granted imperium proconsulare maius—as Macedonia was a senatorial province under the Senate's jurisdiction, not an imperial province under the authority of Augustus. Such an action would have ripped away the veneer of republican restoration as promoted by Augustus, and exposed his fraud of merely being the first citizen, a first among equals. Even worse, the involvement of Marcellus provided some measure of proof that Augustus's policy was to have the youth take his place as princeps, instituting a form of monarchy—accusations that had already played out. The situation was so serious that Augustus appeared at the trial even though he had not been called as a witness. Under oath, Augustus declared that he gave no such order. Murena disbelieved Augustus's testimony and resented his attempt to subvert the trial by using his auctoritas. He rudely demanded to know why Augustus had turned up to a trial to which he had not been called; Augustus replied that he came in the public interest. Although Primus was found guilty, some jurors voted to acquit, meaning that not everybody believed Augustus's testimony, an insult to the 'August One'. The second settlement was completed in part to allay confusion and formalize Augustus's legal authority to intervene in senatorial provinces. The Senate granted Augustus a form of general imperium proconsulare, or proconsular imperium (power) that applied throughout the empire, not solely to his provinces. Moreover, the Senate augmented Augustus's proconsular imperium into imperium proconsulare maius, or proconsular imperium applicable throughout the empire that was more (maius) or greater than that held by the other proconsuls. This in effect gave Augustus constitutional power superior to all other proconsuls in the empire. Augustus stayed in Rome during the renewal process and provided veterans with lavish donations to gain their support, thereby ensuring that his status of proconsular imperium maius was renewed in 13 BC. ### Additional powers During the second settlement, Augustus was also granted the power of a tribune (tribunicia potestas) for life, though not the official title of tribune. For some years, Augustus had been awarded tribunicia sacrosanctitas, the immunity given to a tribune of the plebs. Now he decided to assume the full powers of the magistracy, renewed annually, in perpetuity. Legally, it was closed to patricians, a status that Augustus had acquired some years earlier when adopted by Julius Caesar. This power allowed him to convene the Senate and people at will and lay business before them, to veto the actions of either the Assembly or the Senate, to preside over elections, and to speak first at any meeting. Also included in Augustus's tribunician authority were powers usually reserved for the Roman censor; these included the right to supervise public morals and scrutinize laws to ensure that they were in the public interest, as well as the ability to hold a census and determine the membership of the Senate. With the powers of a censor, Augustus appealed to virtues of Roman patriotism by banning all attire but the classic toga while entering the Forum. There was no precedent within the Roman system for combining the powers of the tribune and the censor into a single position, nor was Augustus ever elected to the office of censor. Julius Caesar had been granted similar powers, wherein he was charged with supervising the morals of the state. However, this position did not extend to the censor's ability to hold a census and determine the Senate's roster. The office of the tribunus plebis began to lose its prestige due to Augustus's amassing of tribunal powers, so he revived its importance by making it a mandatory appointment for any plebeian desiring the praetorship. Augustus was granted sole imperium within the city of Rome in addition to being granted proconsular imperium maius and tribunician authority for life. Traditionally, proconsuls (Roman province governors) lost their proconsular "imperium" when they crossed the Pomerium—the sacred boundary of Rome—and entered the city. In these situations, Augustus would have power as part of his tribunician authority, but his constitutional imperium within the Pomerium would be less than that of a serving consul, which meant that when he was in the city he might not be the constitutional magistrate with the most authority. Thanks to his prestige or auctoritas, his wishes would usually be obeyed, but there might be some difficulty. To fill this power vacuum, the Senate voted that Augustus's imperium proconsulare maius (superior proconsular power) should not lapse when he was inside the city walls. All armed forces in the city had formerly been under the control of the urban praetors and consuls, but this situation now placed them under the sole authority of Augustus. In addition, the credit was given to Augustus for each subsequent Roman military victory after this time, because the majority of Rome's armies were stationed in imperial provinces commanded by Augustus through the legatus who were deputies of the princeps in the provinces. Moreover, if a battle was fought in a senatorial province, Augustus's proconsular imperium maius allowed him to take command of (or credit for) any major military victory. This meant that Augustus was the only individual able to receive a triumph, a tradition that began with Romulus, Rome's first king and first triumphant general. Tiberius, Augustus's eldest stepson by Livia, was the only other general to receive a triumph—for victories in Germania in 7 BC. Normally during republican times, the powers Augustus held even after the second settlement would have been split between several people, who would each exercise them with the assistance of a colleague and for a specific period of time. Augustus held them all at once by himself and with no time limits; even those that nominally had time limits were automatically renewed whenever they lapsed. ### Conspiracy Many of the political subtleties of the second settlement seem to have evaded the comprehension of the plebeian class, who were Augustus's greatest supporters and clientele. This caused them to insist upon Augustus's participation in imperial affairs from time to time. Augustus failed to stand for election as consul in 22 BC, and fears arose once again that he was being forced from power by the aristocratic Senate. In 22, 21, and 19 BC, the people rioted in response and only allowed a single consul to be elected for each of those years, ostensibly to leave the other position open for Augustus. Likewise, there was a food shortage in Rome in 22 BC which sparked panic, while many urban plebs called for Augustus to take on dictatorial powers to personally oversee the crisis. After a theatrical display of refusal before the Senate, Augustus finally accepted authority over Rome's grain supply "by virtue of his proconsular imperium", and ended the crisis almost immediately. It was not until AD 8 that a food crisis of this sort prompted Augustus to establish a praefectus annonae, a permanent prefect who was in charge of procuring food supplies for Rome. There were some who were concerned by the expansion of powers granted to Augustus by the second settlement, and this came to a head with the apparent conspiracy of Fannius Caepio. Some time prior to 1 September 22 BC, a certain Castricius provided Augustus with information about a conspiracy led by Fannius Caepio. Murena, the outspoken consul who defended Primus in the Marcus Primus affair, was named among the conspirators. The conspirators were tried in absentia with Tiberius acting as prosecutor; the jury found them guilty, but it was not a unanimous verdict. All the accused were sentenced to death for treason and executed as soon as they were captured—without ever giving testimony in their defence. Augustus ensured that the façade of Republican government continued with an effective cover-up of the events. In 19 BC, the Senate granted Augustus a form of "general consular imperium", which was probably imperium consulare maius, like the proconsular powers that he received in 23 BC. Like his tribune authority, the consular powers were another instance of gaining power from offices that he did not actually hold. In addition, Augustus was allowed to wear the consul's insignia in public and before the Senate, as well as to sit in the symbolic chair between the two consuls and hold the fasces, an emblem of consular authority. This seems to have assuaged the populace; regardless of whether or not Augustus was a consul, the importance was that he both appeared as one before the people and could exercise consular power if necessary. On 6 March 12 BC, after the death of Lepidus, he additionally took up the position of pontifex maximus, the high priest of the college of the pontiffs, the most important position in Roman religion. On 5 February 2 BC, Augustus was also given the title pater patriae, or "father of the country". ### Stability and staying power A final reason for the second settlement was to give the principate constitutional stability and staying power in case something happened to Princeps Augustus. His illness of early 23 BC and the Caepio conspiracy showed that the regime's existence hung by the thin thread of the life of one man, Augustus himself, who had several severe and dangerous illnesses throughout his life. If he were to die from natural causes or fall victim to assassination, Rome could be subjected to another round of civil war. The memories of Pharsalus, the Ides of March, the proscriptions, Philippi, and Actium, barely twenty-five years distant, were still vivid in the minds of many citizens. Proconsular imperium was conferred upon Agrippa for five years, similar to Augustus's power, in order to accomplish this constitutional stability. The exact nature of the grant is uncertain but it probably covered Augustus's imperial provinces, east and west, perhaps lacking authority over the provinces of the Senate. That came later, as did the jealously guarded tribunicia potestas. Augustus's accumulation of powers was now complete. ### War and expansion By AD 13, Augustus boasted 21 occasions where his troops proclaimed him imperator after a successful battle. Almost the entire fourth chapter in his publicly released memoirs of achievements known as the Res Gestae is devoted to his military victories and honours. Augustus also promoted the ideal of a superior Roman civilisation with a task of ruling the world (to the extent to which the Romans knew it), a sentiment embodied in words that the contemporary poet Virgil attributes to a legendary ancestor of Augustus: tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento—"Roman, remember to rule the Earth's peoples with authority\!" The impulse for expansionism was apparently prominent among all classes at Rome, and it is accorded divine sanction by Virgil's Jupiter in Book 1 of the Aeneid, where Jupiter promises Rome imperium sine fine, "sovereignty without end". By the end of his reign, the armies of Augustus had conquered northern Hispania (modern Spain and Portugal) and the Alpine regions of Raetia and Noricum (modern Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria, Slovenia), Illyricum and Pannonia (modern Albania, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, etc.), and had extended the borders of Africa Proconsularis to the east and south. Judea was added to the province of Syria when Augustus deposed Herod Archelaus, successor to client king Herod the Great. Syria (like Egypt after Antony) was governed by a high prefect of the equestrian class rather than by a proconsul or legate of Augustus. Again, no military effort was needed in 25 BC when Galatia (part of modern Turkey) was converted to a Roman province shortly after Amyntas of Galatia was killed by an avenging widow of a slain prince from Homonada. The rebellious tribes of Asturias and Cantabria in modern-day Spain were finally quelled in 19 BC, and the territory fell under the provinces of Hispania and Lusitania. This region proved to be a major asset in funding Augustus's future military campaigns, as it was rich in mineral deposits that could be fostered in Roman mining projects, especially the very rich gold deposits at Las Médulas. Conquering the peoples of the Alps in 16 BC was another important victory for Rome, since it provided a large territorial buffer between the Roman citizens of Italy and Rome's enemies in Germania to the north. Horace dedicated an ode to the victory, while the monumental Trophy of Augustus near Monaco was built to honour the occasion. The capture of the Alpine region also served the next offensive in 12 BC, when Tiberius began the offensive against the Pannonian tribes of Illyricum, and his brother Nero Claudius Drusus moved against the Germanic tribes of the eastern Rhineland. Both campaigns were successful, as Drusus's forces reached the Elbe River by 9 BC—though he died shortly after by falling off his horse. It was recorded that the pious Tiberius walked in front of his brother's body all the way back to Rome. To protect Rome's eastern territories from the Parthian Empire, Augustus relied on the client states of the east to act as territorial buffers and areas that could raise their own troops for defense. To ensure security of the empire's eastern flank, Augustus stationed a Roman army in Syria, while his skilled stepson Tiberius negotiated with the Parthians as Rome's diplomat to the East. Tiberius was responsible for restoring Tigranes V to the throne of the Kingdom of Armenia. Arguably his greatest diplomatic achievement was negotiating with Phraates IV of Parthia (37–2 BC) in 20 BC for the return of the battle standards lost by Crassus in the Battle of Carrhae, a symbolic victory and great boost of morale for Rome. Werner Eck claims that this was a great disappointment for Romans seeking to avenge Crassus's defeat by military means. However, Maria Brosius explains that Augustus used the return of the standards as propaganda symbolizing the submission of Parthia to Rome. The event was celebrated in art such as the breastplate design on the statue Augustus of Prima Porta and in monuments such as the Temple of Mars Ultor ('Mars the Avenger') built to house the standards. Parthia had always posed a threat to Rome in the east, but the real battlefront was along the Rhine and Danube rivers. Before the final fight with Antony, Octavian's campaigns against the tribes in Dalmatia were the first step in expanding Roman dominions to the Danube. Victory in battle was not always a permanent success, as newly conquered territories were constantly retaken by Rome's enemies in Germania. A prime example of Roman loss in battle was the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, where three entire legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus were destroyed by Arminius, leader of the Cherusci, an apparent Roman ally. Augustus retaliated by dispatching Tiberius and Drusus to the Rhineland to pacify it, which had some success although the battle brought the end to Roman expansion into Germany. The Roman general Germanicus took advantage of a Cherusci civil war between Arminius and Segestes; at the Battle of Idistaviso in AD 16, he defeated Arminius. ## Death and succession The illness of Augustus in 23 BC brought the problem of succession to the forefront of political issues and the public. To ensure stability, he needed to designate an heir to his unique position in Roman society and government. This was to be achieved in small, undramatic and incremental ways that did not stir senatorial fears of monarchy. If someone was to succeed to Augustus's unofficial position of power, he would have to earn it through his own publicly proven merits. Some Augustan historians argue that indications pointed toward his sister's son Marcellus, who had been quickly married to Augustus's daughter Julia the Elder. Other historians dispute this since Augustus's will was read aloud to the Senate while he was seriously ill in 23 BC, indicating a preference for Marcus Agrippa, who was Augustus's second in charge and arguably the only one of his associates who could have controlled the legions and held the empire together. After the death of Marcellus in 23 BC, Augustus married his daughter to Agrippa. This union produced five children, three sons and two daughters: Gaius Caesar, Lucius Caesar, Vipsania Julia, Agrippina, and Agrippa Postumus, so named because he was born after Marcus Agrippa died. Shortly after the second settlement, Agrippa was granted a five-year term of administering the eastern half of the empire with the imperium of a proconsul and the same tribunicia potestas granted to Augustus (although not trumping Augustus's authority), his seat of governance stationed at Samos in the eastern Aegean. This granting of power showed Augustus's favor for Agrippa, but it was also a measure to please members of his Caesarian party by allowing one of their members to share a considerable amount of power with him. Augustus's intent became apparent to make his grandsons Gaius and Lucius his heirs when he adopted them as his own children. He took the consulship in 5 and 2 BC so that he could personally usher them into their political careers, and they were nominated for the consulships of AD 1 and 4. Augustus also showed favour to his stepsons, Livia's children from her first marriage, Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus (henceforth referred to as Drusus) and Tiberius Claudius (henceforth Tiberius), granting them military commands and public office, though seeming to favour Drusus. After Agrippa died in 12 BC, Tiberius was ordered to divorce his own wife, Vipsania Agrippina, and marry Augustus's widowed daughter, Julia, as soon as a period of mourning for Agrippa had ended. Drusus's marriage to Augustus's niece Antonia was considered an unbreakable affair, whereas Vipsania was "only" the daughter of the late Agrippa from his first marriage. Tiberius shared in Augustus's tribune powers as of 6 BC but shortly thereafter went into retirement, reportedly wanting no further role in politics while he exiled himself to Rhodes. No specific reason is known for his departure, though it could have been a combination of reasons, including a failing marriage with Julia as well as a sense of envy and exclusion over Augustus's apparent favouring of the younger Gaius and Lucius. (Gaius and Lucius joined the college of priests at an early age, were presented to spectators in a more favourable light, and were introduced to the army in Gaul.) After the deaths of both Lucius and Gaius in AD 2 and 4 respectively, and the earlier death of his brother Drusus (9 BC), Tiberius was recalled to Rome in June AD 4, where he was adopted by Augustus on the condition that he, in turn, adopt his nephew Germanicus. This continued the tradition of presenting at least two generations of heirs. In that year, Tiberius was also granted the powers of a tribune and proconsul, emissaries from foreign kings had to pay their respects to him and by AD 13 was awarded with his second triumph and equal level of imperium with that of Augustus. The only other possible claimant as heir was Agrippa Postumus, who had been exiled by Augustus in AD 7, his banishment made permanent by senatorial decree, and Augustus officially disowned him. He certainly fell out of Augustus's favour as an heir; the historian Erich S. Gruen notes various contemporary sources that state Agrippa Postumus was a "vulgar young man, brutal and brutish, and of depraved character". On 19 August AD 14, Augustus died while visiting Nola where his father had died. Both Tacitus and Cassius Dio wrote that Livia was rumored to have brought about Augustus's death by poisoning fresh figs. This element features in many modern works of historical fiction pertaining to Augustus's life, but some historians view it as likely to have been a salacious fabrication made by those who had favoured Postumus as heir, or other political enemies of Tiberius. Livia had long been the target of similar rumors of poisoning on the behalf of her son, most or all of which are unlikely to have been true. Alternatively, it is possible that Livia did supply a poisoned fig (she did cultivate a variety of fig named for her that Augustus is said to have enjoyed), but did so as a means of assisted suicide rather than murder. Augustus's health had been in decline in the months immediately before his death, and he had made significant preparations for a smooth transition in power, having at last reluctantly settled on Tiberius as his choice of heir. It is likely that Augustus was not expected to return alive from Nola, but it seems that his health improved once there; it has therefore been speculated that Augustus and Livia conspired to end his life at the anticipated time, having committed all political process to accepting Tiberius, in order to not endanger that transition. Augustus's famous last words were, "Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit" ("Acta est fabula, plaudite")—referring to the play-acting and regal authority that he had put on as emperor. An enormous funerary procession of mourners travelled with Augustus's body from Nola to Rome, and all public and private businesses closed on the day of his burial. Tiberius and his son Drusus delivered the eulogy while standing atop two rostra. Augustus's body was coffin-bound and cremated on a pyre close to his mausoleum. It was proclaimed that Augustus joined the company of the gods as a member of the Roman pantheon. Historian D. C. A. Shotter states that Augustus's policy of favoring the Julian family line over the Claudian might have afforded Tiberius sufficient cause to show open disdain for Augustus after the latter's death; instead, Tiberius was always quick to rebuke those who criticized Augustus. Shotter suggests that Augustus's deification obliged Tiberius to suppress any open resentment that he might have harbored, coupled with Tiberius's "extremely conservative" attitude towards religion. Also, historian R. Shaw-Smith points to letters of Augustus to Tiberius which display affection towards Tiberius and high regard for his military merits. Shotter states that Tiberius focused his anger and criticism on Gaius Asinius Gallus (for marrying Vipsania after Augustus forced Tiberius to divorce her), as well as toward the two young Caesars, Gaius and Lucius—instead of Augustus, the real architect of his divorce and imperial demotion. ## Legacy Augustus created a regime which maintained peace and prosperity in the Roman west and the Greek east for two centuries. Its dominance also laid the foundations of a concept of universal empire in the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empires down to their dissolutions in 1453 and 1806, respectively. Both his adoptive surname, Caesar, and his title Augustus became the permanent titles of the rulers of the Roman Empire for fourteen centuries after his death, in use both at Old Rome and at New Rome. In many languages, Caesar became the word for emperor, as in the German Kaiser and in the Bulgarian and subsequently Russian Tsar (sometimes Csar or Czar). The cult of Divus Augustus continued until the state religion of the empire was changed to Christianity in 391 by Theodosius I. Consequently, there are many statues and busts of the first emperor. He had composed an account of his achievements, the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, to be inscribed in bronze in front of his mausoleum. Copies of the text were inscribed throughout the empire upon his death. The inscriptions in Latin featured translations in Greek beside it and were inscribed on many public edifices, such as the temple in Ankara dubbed the Monumentum Ancyranum, called the "queen of inscriptions" by historian Theodor Mommsen. The Res Gestae is the only work to have survived from antiquity, though Augustus is also known to have composed poems entitled Sicily, Epiphanus, and Ajax, an autobiography of 13 books, a philosophical treatise, and a written rebuttal to Brutus's Eulogy of Cato. Historians are able to analyze excerpts of letters penned by Augustus, preserved in other works, to others for additional facts or clues about his personal life. Many consider Augustus to be Rome's greatest emperor; his policies certainly extended the empire's life span and initiated the celebrated Pax Romana or Pax Augusta. The Roman Senate wished subsequent emperors to "be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan". Augustus was intelligent, decisive, and a shrewd politician, but he was not perhaps as charismatic as Julius Caesar and was influenced on occasion by Livia (sometimes for the worse). Nevertheless, his legacy proved more enduring. The city of Rome was utterly transformed under Augustus, with Rome's first institutionalized police force, firefighting force, and the establishment of the municipal prefect as a permanent office. The police force was divided into cohorts of 500 men each, while the units of firemen ranged from 500 to 1,000 men each, with 7 units assigned to 14 divided city sectors. A praefectus vigilum, or "Prefect of the Watch" was put in charge of the vigiles, Rome's fire brigade and police. With Rome's civil wars at an end, Augustus was also able to create a standing army for the Roman Empire, fixed at a size of 28 legions of about 170,000 soldiers. This was supported by numerous auxiliary units of 500 non-citizen soldiers each, often recruited from recently conquered areas. With his finances securing the maintenance of roads throughout Italy, Augustus installed an official courier system of relay stations overseen by a military officer known as the praefectus vehiculorum. Besides the advent of swifter communication among Italian polities, his extensive building of roads throughout Italy also allowed Rome's armies to march swiftly and at an unprecedented pace across the country. In the year 6 Augustus established the aerarium militare, donating 170 million sesterces to the new military treasury that provided for both active and retired soldiers. One of the most enduring institutions of Augustus was the establishment of the Praetorian Guard in 27 BC, originally a personal bodyguard unit on the battlefield that evolved into an imperial guard as well as an important political force in Rome. They had the power to intimidate the Senate, install new emperors, and depose ones they disliked; the last emperor they served was Maxentius, as it was Constantine I who disbanded them in the early 4th century and destroyed their barracks, the Castra Praetoria. Although the most powerful individual in the Roman Empire, Augustus wished to embody the spirit of Republican virtue and norms. He also wanted to relate to and connect with the concerns of the plebs and lay people. He achieved this through various means of generosity and a cutting back of lavish excess. In the year 29 BC, Augustus gave 400 sesterces (equal to 1/10 of a Roman pound of gold) each to 250,000 citizens, 1,000 sesterces each to 120,000 veterans in the colonies, and spent 700 million sesterces in purchasing land for his soldiers to settle upon. He also restored 82 different temples to display his care for the Roman pantheon of deities. In 28 BC, he melted down 80 silver statues erected in his likeness and in honour of him, an attempt of his to appear frugal and modest. The longevity of Augustus's reign and its legacy to the Roman world should not be overlooked as a key factor in its success. As Tacitus wrote, the younger generations alive in AD 14 had never known any form of government other than the principate. Had Augustus died earlier, matters might have turned out differently. The attrition of the civil wars on the old Republican oligarchy and the longevity of Augustus, therefore, must be seen as major contributing factors in the transformation of the Roman state into a de facto monarchy in these years. Augustus's own experience, his patience, his tact, and his political acumen also played their parts. He directed the future of the empire down many lasting paths, from the existence of a standing professional army stationed at or near the frontiers, to the dynastic principle so often employed in the imperial succession, to the embellishment of the capital at the emperor's expense. Augustus's ultimate legacy was the peace and prosperity the Empire enjoyed for the next two centuries under the system he initiated. His memory was enshrined in the political ethos of the Imperial age as a paradigm of the good emperor. Every emperor of Rome adopted his name, Caesar Augustus, which gradually lost its character as a name and eventually became a title. The Augustan era poets Virgil and Horace praised Augustus as a defender of Rome, an upholder of moral justice, and an individual who bore the brunt of responsibility in maintaining the empire. However, for his rule of Rome and establishing the principate, Augustus has also been subjected to criticism throughout the ages. The contemporary Roman jurist Marcus Antistius Labeo, fond of the days of pre-Augustan republican liberty in which he had been born, openly criticised the Augustan regime. In the beginning of his Annals, Tacitus wrote that Augustus had cunningly subverted Republican Rome into a position of slavery. He continued to say that, with Augustus's death and swearing of loyalty to Tiberius, the people of Rome traded one slaveholder for another. In a 2006 biography on Augustus, Anthony Everitt asserts that through the centuries, judgments on Augustus's reign have oscillated between these two extremes. Tacitus was of the belief that Nerva (r. 96–98) successfully "mingled two formerly alien ideas, principate and liberty". The 3rd-century historian Cassius Dio acknowledged Augustus as a benign, moderate ruler, yet like most other historians after the death of Augustus, Dio viewed Augustus as an autocrat. The poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (AD 39–65) was of the opinion that Caesar's victory over Pompey and the fall of Cato the Younger (95 BC–46 BC) marked the end of traditional liberty in Rome; historian Chester Starr writes of his avoidance of criticizing Augustus, "perhaps Augustus was too sacred a figure to accuse directly." The Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), in his Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome, criticised Augustus for installing tyranny over Rome, and likened what he believed Great Britain's virtuous constitutional monarchy to Rome's moral Republic of the 2nd century BC. In his criticism of Augustus, the admiral and historian Thomas Gordon (1658–1741) compared Augustus to the puritanical tyrant Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658). Thomas Gordon and the French political philosopher Montesquieu (1689–1755) both remarked that Augustus was a coward in battle. In his Memoirs of the Court of Augustus, the Scottish scholar Thomas Blackwell (1701–1757) deemed Augustus a Machiavellian ruler, "a bloodthirsty vindicative usurper", "wicked and worthless", "a mean spirit", and a "tyrant". ### Revenue reforms Augustus's public revenue reforms had a great impact on the subsequent success of the Empire. Augustus brought a far greater portion of the Empire's expanded land base under consistent, direct taxation from Rome, instead of exacting varying, intermittent, and somewhat arbitrary tributes from each local province as Augustus's predecessors had done. This reform greatly increased Rome's net revenue from its territorial acquisitions, stabilized its flow, and regularized the financial relationship between Rome and the provinces, rather than provoking fresh resentments with each new arbitrary exaction of tribute. The measures of taxation in the reign of Augustus were determined by population census, with fixed quotas for each province. Citizens of Rome and Italy paid indirect taxes, while direct taxes were exacted from the provinces. Indirect taxes included a 4% tax on the price of slaves, a 1% tax on goods sold at auction, and a 5% tax on the inheritance of estates valued at over 100,000 sesterces by persons other than the next of kin. An equally important reform was the abolition of private tax farming, which was replaced by salaried civil service tax collectors. Private contractors who collected taxes for the State were the norm in the Republican era. Some of them were powerful enough to influence the number of votes for men running for offices in Rome. These tax farmers called publicans were infamous for their depredations, great private wealth, and the right to tax local areas. The use of Egypt's immense land rents to finance the Empire's operations resulted from Augustus's conquest of Egypt and the shift to a Roman form of government. As it was effectively considered Augustus's private property rather than a province of the Empire, it became part of each succeeding emperor's patrimonium. Instead of a legate or proconsul, Augustus installed a prefect from the equestrian class to administer Egypt and maintain its lucrative seaports; this position became the highest political achievement for any equestrian besides becoming Prefect of the Praetorian Guard. The highly productive agricultural land of Egypt yielded enormous revenues that were available to Augustus and his successors to pay for public works and military expeditions. ### Month of August The month of August (Latin: Augustus) is named after Augustus; until his time it was called Sextilis (named so because it had been the sixth month of the original Roman calendar and the Latin word for six is sex). Commonly repeated lore has it that August has 31 days because Augustus wanted his month to match the length of Julius Caesar's July, but this is an invention of the 13th-century scholar Johannes de Sacrobosco. Sextilis in fact had 31 days before it was renamed, and it was not chosen for its length (see Julian calendar). According to a senatus consultum quoted by Macrobius, Sextilis was renamed to honour Augustus because several of the most significant events in his rise to power, culminating in the fall of Alexandria, fell in that month. ### Creation of "Italia" Roman Italy was established by Augustus in 7 BC with the Latin name "Italia". This was the first time that the Italian peninsula was united administratively and politically under the same name. Due to this act, Augustus was called the Father of Italy by Italian historians such as G. Giannelli. ### Building projects On his deathbed, Augustus boasted "I found a Rome of bricks; I leave to you one of marble." Although there is some truth in the literal meaning of this, Cassius Dio asserts that it was a metaphor for the Empire's strength. Marble could be found in buildings of Rome before Augustus, but it was not extensively used as a building material until the reign of Augustus. Although this did not apply to the Subura slums, which were still as rickety and fire-prone as ever, he did leave a mark on the monumental topography of the centre and of the Campus Martius, with the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace) and monumental sundial, whose central gnomon was an obelisk taken from Egypt. The relief sculptures decorating the Ara Pacis visually augmented the written record of Augustus's triumphs in the Res Gestae. Its reliefs depicted the imperial pageants of the praetorians, the Vestals, and the citizenry of Rome. He also built the Temple of Caesar, the Temple of Jupiter Tonans, the Temple of Apollo Palatinus and the Baths of Agrippa, and the Forum of Augustus with its Temple of Mars Ultor. Other projects were either encouraged by him, such as the Theatre of Balbus, and Agrippa's construction of the Pantheon, or funded by him in the name of others, often relations (e.g. Portico of Octavia, Theatre of Marcellus). Even his Mausoleum of Augustus was built before his death to house members of his family. To celebrate his victory at the Battle of Actium, the Arch of Augustus was built in 29 BC near the entrance of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, and widened in 19 BC to include a triple-arch design. After the death of Agrippa in 12 BC, a solution had to be found in maintaining Rome's water supply system. This came about because it was overseen by Agrippa when he served as aedile, and was even funded by him afterwards when he was a private citizen paying at his own expense. In that year, Augustus arranged a system where the Senate designated three of its members as prime commissioners in charge of the water supply and to ensure that Rome's aqueducts did not fall into disrepair. In the late Augustan era, the commission of five senators called the curatores locorum publicorum iudicandorum (translated as "Supervisors of Public Property") was put in charge of maintaining public buildings and temples of the state cult. Augustus created the senatorial group of the curatores viarum (translated as "Supervisors for Roads") for the upkeep of roads; this senatorial commission worked with local officials and contractors to organize regular repairs. The Corinthian order of architectural style originating from ancient Greece was the dominant architectural style in the age of Augustus and the imperial phase of Rome. Suetonius once commented that Rome was unworthy of its status as an imperial capital, yet Augustus and Agrippa set out to dismantle this sentiment by transforming the appearance of Rome upon the classical Greek model. #### Residences The official residence of Augustus was the Domus Augusti on the Palatine which he made into a palace after buying it in 41/40 BC. He had other residences such as the horti maecenati in Rome where Augustus preferred to stay whenever he became ill and which Maecenas left to him in his will in 8 BC. The great villa of Vedius Pollio at Posilipo near Naples was beqeathed (probably forced) to him in 15 BC. Augustus built the Palazzo a Mare palace on Capri. He also built the immense Villa Giulia on the island of Ventotene as a summer residence early in his reign. The family home of Augustus was probably the villa at Somma Vesuviana, Nola. This was the location where he died and where his father also died. ## Physical appearance and official images His biographer Suetonius, writing about a century after Augustus's death, described his appearance as: "... unusually handsome and exceedingly graceful at all periods of his life, though he cared nothing for personal adornment. He was so far from being particular about the dressing of his hair, that he would have several barbers working in a hurry at the same time, and as for his beard he now had it clipped and now shaved, while at the very same time he would either be reading or writing something ... He had clear, bright eyes ... His teeth were wide apart, small, and ill-kept; his hair was slightly curly and inclined to golden; his eyebrows met. His ears were of moderate size, and his nose projected a little at the top and then bent ever so slightly inward. His complexion was between dark and fair. He was short of stature, although Julius Marathus, his freedman and keeper of his records, says that he was five feet and nine inches (just under 5 ft. 7 in., or 1.70 meters, in modern height measurements), but this was concealed by the fine proportion and symmetry of his figure, and was noticeable only by comparison with some taller person standing beside him...", adding that "his shoes [were] somewhat high-soled, to make him look taller than he really was". Scientific analysis of traces of paint found in his official statues shows that he most likely had light brown hair. His official images were very tightly controlled and idealised, drawing from a tradition of Hellenistic portraiture rather than the tradition of realism in Roman portraiture. He first appeared on coins at the age of 19, and from about 29 BC "the explosion in the number of Augustan portraits attests a concerted propaganda campaign aimed at dominating all aspects of civil, religious, economic and military life with Augustus's person." The early images did indeed depict a young man, but although there were gradual changes his images remained youthful until he died in his seventies, by which time they had "a distanced air of ageless majesty", according to the classicist R. R. R. Smith. Among the best known of many surviving portraits are the Augustus of Prima Porta, the image on the Ara Pacis, and the Via Labicana Augustus, which depicts him in his role as pontifex maximus. Several cameo portraits include the Blacas Cameo and Gemma Augustea. ## See also - Augustan and Julio-Claudian art - Augustan literature (ancient Rome) - Indo-Roman trade relations - Julio-Claudian family tree - Temple of Augustus

Shah Rukh Khan

Indian actor (born 1965)

Shahrukh Khan (; born 2 November 1965), also known by the initialism SRK, is an Indian actor and film producer who works in Hindi cinema. Referred to in the media as the "Baadshah of Bollywood" and "King Khan", he has appeared in more than 100 films, and earned numerous accolades, including 14 Filmfare Awards. He has been awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India, as well as the Order of Arts and Letters and Legion of Honour by the Government of France. Khan has a significant following in Asia and the Indian diaspora worldwide. In terms of audience size and income, several media outlets have described him as one of the most successful film stars in the world. Many of his films thematise Indian national identity and connections with diaspora communities, or gender, racial, social and religious differences and grievances. Khan began his career with appearances in several television series in the late 1980s and made his Bollywood debut in 1992 with the musical romance Deewana. He was initially recognised for playing villainous roles in the films Baazigar (1993) and Darr (1993). Khan established himself by starring in a series of top-grossing romantic films, including Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Mohabbatein (2000), Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... (2001), Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), Veer-Zaara (2004) and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006). He earned critical acclaim for his portrayal of an alcoholic in the period romantic drama Devdas (2002), a NASA scientist in the social drama Swades (2004), a hockey coach in the sports drama Chak De\! India (2007), and a man with Asperger syndrome in the drama My Name Is Khan (2010). Further commercial successes came with the romances Om Shanti Om (2007) and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008), and with his expansion to comedies in Chennai Express (2013) and Happy New Year (2014). Following a brief setback and hiatus, Khan made a career comeback with the 2023 action thrillers Pathaan and Jawan, both of which rank among the highest-grossing Indian films. As of 2015, Khan is co-chairman of the motion picture production company Red Chillies Entertainment and its subsidiaries and is the co-owner of the Indian Premier League cricket team Kolkata Knight Riders and the Caribbean Premier League team Trinbago Knight Riders. The media often label him as "Brand SRK" because of his many endorsements and entrepreneurship ventures. He is a frequent television presenter and stage show performer. Khan's philanthropic endeavours have provided health care and disaster relief, and he was honoured with UNESCO's Pyramide con Marni award in 2011 for his support of children's education and the World Economic Forum's Crystal Award in 2018 for advocating for women's and children's rights in India. He regularly features in listings of the most influential people in Indian culture, and in 2008, Newsweek named him one of their fifty most powerful people in the world. In 2022, Khan was voted one of the 50 greatest actors of all time in a readers' poll by Empire, and in 2023, Time named him as one of the most influential people in the world. ## Early life and family ### Parents Khan's father, Mir Taj Mohammed Khan, was an Indian independence activist from Peshawar who campaigned alongside the Khudai Khidmatgar, a nonviolent resistance movement led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan that sought a united and independent India. Mir was a follower of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and affiliated with the Indian National Congress. He was also the cousin of the major general in the Indian National Army Shah Nawaz Khan. According to Khan his paternal grandfather, Mir Jan Muhammad Khan, was an ethnic Pashtun (Pathan) from Afghanistan. However, his paternal cousins in Peshawar later clarified that the family speaks Hindko and is originally from Kashmir, from where they settled in Peshawar centuries back, contradicting the claim that his grandfather was a Pashtun from Afghanistan. As of 2010, Khan's paternal family was still living in the Shah Wali Qataal area of Peshawar's Qissa Khwani Bazaar. In 1946, Mir moved to Delhi to study law at Delhi University. When the partition of India occurred in 1947, he was forced to stay in Delhi, and did not return to Peshawar until many years later. Khan's mother, Lateef Fatima, a magistrate, was the daughter of a senior government engineer. His parents were married in 1959. ### Early life Khan was born on 2 November 1965 into a Muslim family in New Delhi. He spent the first five years of his life in Mangalore, where his maternal grandfather, Iftikhar Ahmed, served as chief engineer of the port in the 1960s. Khan has described himself on Twitter as "half Hyderabadi (mother), half Pathan (father), and some Kashmiri (grandmother)". Khan grew up in the Rajendra Nagar neighbourhood of New Delhi. His father had several business ventures including a restaurant, and the family lived a middle-class life in rented apartments. Khan attended St. Columba's School in central Delhi where he excelled in his studies and in sports such as hockey and football, and received the school's highest award, the Sword of Honour. Initially Khan aspired to pursue a career in sports, however owing to a shoulder injury in his early years meant that he could no longer play. Instead, in his youth, he acted in stage plays and received praise for his imitations of Bollywood actors, of which his favourites were Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan, and Mumtaz. One of his childhood friends and acting partners was Amrita Singh, who became a Bollywood actress. Khan enrolled at Hansraj College (1985–88) to earn his bachelor's degree in economics, but spent much of his time at Delhi's Theatre Action Group (TAG), where he studied acting under the mentorship of theatre director Barry John. After Hansraj, he began studying for a master's degree in mass communication at Jamia Millia Islamia, but left to pursue his acting career. He also attended the National School of Drama in Delhi during his early career in Bollywood. His father died of cancer in 1981, and his mother died in 1991 from complications of diabetes. After the death of their parents, his older sister, Shahnaz Lalarukh (born 1960) fell into a depressed state and Khan took on the responsibility of caring for her. Shahnaz continues to live with her brother and his family in their Mumbai mansion. ## Acting career ### 1988–1992: Television and film debut Khan's first starring role was in Lekh Tandon's television series Dil Dariya, which began shooting in 1988, but production delays led to the Raj Kumar Kapoor directed 1989 series Fauji becoming his television debut instead. In the series, which depicted a realistic look at the training of army cadets, he played the leading role of Abhimanyu Rai. This led to further appearances in Aziz Mirza's television series Circus (1989–90) and Mani Kaul's miniseries Idiot (1992). Khan also played minor parts in the serials Umeed (1989) and Wagle Ki Duniya (1988–90), and in the English-language television film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989). His appearances in these serials led critics to compare his look and acting style with those of the film actor Dilip Kumar, but Khan was not interested in film acting at the time, thinking that he was not good enough. Khan changed his decision to act in films in April 1991, citing it as a way to escape the grief of his mother's death. He moved from Delhi to Mumbai to pursue a full-time career in Bollywood and was quickly signed to four films. His first offer was for Hema Malini's directorial debut Dil Aashna Hai, and by June, he had started his first shoot. His film debut was in Deewana, which was released in June 1992. In it he starred alongside Divya Bharti as the second male lead behind Rishi Kapoor. Deewana became a box office hit and launched Khan's Bollywood career; he earned the Filmfare Best Male Debut Award for his performance. Also released in 1992 were Khan's first films as the male lead, Chamatkar, Dil Aashna Hai, and the comedy Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, which was his first of many collaborations with the actress Juhi Chawla. His initial film roles saw him play characters who displayed energy and enthusiasm. According to Arnab Ray of Daily News and Analysis, Khan brought a new kind of acting as he was "sliding down stairs on a slab of ice, cartwheeling, somersaulting, lips trembling, eyes trembling, bringing to the screen the kind of physical energy ... visceral, intense, maniacal one moment and cloyingly boyish the next." ### 1993–1994: Negative characters Among his 1993 releases, Khan garnered the most appreciation for portraying villainous roles in two box office hits: a murderer in Baazigar, and an obsessive lover in Darr. The former, in which Khan played an ambiguous avenger who murders his girlfriend, shocked Indian audiences with an unexpected violation of the standard Bollywood formula. In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture, Sonal Khullar called the character "the consummate anti-hero". His performance in Baazigar, which would be his first of many appearances with actress Kajol, won Khan his first Filmfare Award for Best Actor. In 2003, the Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema stated that Khan "defied the image of the conventional hero in both these films and created his own version of the revisionist hero". Darr marked the first of Khan's many collaborations with filmmaker Yash Chopra and his company Yash Raj Films. Khan's stammering and the use of the phrase "I love you, K-k-k-Kiran" were popular with audiences. Malini Mannath of The Indian Express argued that he "walks away with the acting honours in yet another negative role". For Darr he received a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Performance in a Negative Role, also known as the Best Villain Award, but lost to Paresh Rawal for Sir. Also in 1993, Khan performed a nude scene with Deepa Sahi in Maya Memsaab, although parts of it were censored by the Central Board of Film Certification. The ensuing controversy prompted him to eschew such scenes in future roles. In 1994, Khan played a love-struck musician in Kundan Shah's comedy-drama film Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa opposite Deepak Tijori and Suchitra Krishnamurthy, which he later professed was his favourite role. His performance earned him a Filmfare Critics Award for Best Performance, and in a retrospective review from 2004, Sukanya Verma of Rediff.com referred to it as Khan's best performance, calling him "spontaneous, vulnerable, boyish, mischievous and acting straight from the heart". Also in 1994, Khan won the Filmfare Best Villain Award for his role as an obsessive lover in Anjaam, co-starring Madhuri Dixit. At the time, playing antagonistic roles was considered risky to a leading man's career in mainstream Hindi cinema. Arnab Ray subsequently credited Khan for taking "insane risks" and "pushing the envelope" by choosing to play such characters, through which he established his career. The director Mukul S. Anand called him "the new face of the industry" at the time. ### 1995–1998: Romantic roles Khan starred in seven films in 1995, the first of which was Rakesh Roshan's melodramatic thriller Karan Arjun. Co-starring Salman Khan and Kajol, it became the second-highest-grossing film of the year in India. His most significant release that year was Aditya Chopra's directorial debut, the romance Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, in which he played a young Non-resident Indian (NRI) who falls in love with Kajol's character during a trip across Europe. Khan was initially reticent to portray the role of a lover, but this film is credited with establishing him as a "romantic hero". Lauded by both critics and the public, it became the year's highest grossing production in India and abroad and was declared an "all time blockbuster" by Box Office India, with an estimated lifetime gross of ₹2 billion (US$61.68 million) worldwide. It is the longest-running film in the history of Indian cinema; it is still showing at the Maratha Mandir theatre in Mumbai after more than 1000 weeks as of early 2015. The film won ten Filmfare Awards, including the second of Khan's Best Actor Awards. The director and critic Raja Sen said, "Khan gives a fabulous performance, redefining the lover for the 1990s with great panache. He's cool and flippant, but sincere enough to appeal to the [audience]. The performance itself is, like the best in the business, played well enough to come across as effortless, as non-acting." In 1996, all four of Khan's releases failed critically and commercially, but the following year, his starring role opposite Aditya Pancholi and Juhi Chawla in Aziz Mirza's romantic comedy Yes Boss earned him accolades that included a Filmfare Best Actor nomination. Later in 1997, he starred in Subhash Ghai's diasporic-themed social drama Pardes, portraying Arjun, a musician facing a moral dilemma. India Today cites it as one of the first major Bollywood pictures to succeed in the United States. Khan's final release of 1997 was the second collaboration with Yash Chopra in the popular musical romance Dil To Pagal Hai. He portrayed Rahul, a stage director caught in a love triangle between Madhuri Dixit and Karisma Kapoor. The film and his performance met with critical praise, winning Khan his third Best Actor Award at Filmfare. Khan performed the lead role in three films and made one special appearance in 1998. In his first release of the year, he played a double role opposite Juhi Chawla and Sonali Bendre in Mahesh Bhatt's action comedy Duplicate, the first of his many collaborations with Yash Johar's production company Dharma Productions. The film was not well received, but India Today lauded Khan for his energetic performance. The same year, Khan won critical praise for his performance as an All India Radio correspondent who develops an infatuation for a mysterious terrorist (Manisha Koirala) in Dil Se.., the third instalment of Mani Ratnam's trilogy of terror films. In his final release of the year, he portrayed a college student in Karan Johar's romance Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, in which he was involved in a love triangle along with Kajol and Rani Mukerji. The writer Anjana Motihar Chandra has referred to the picture as the blockbuster of the 1990s, a "pot-pourri of romance, comedy, and entertainment." Khan won the Best Actor award at the Filmfare Awards ceremony for the second consecutive year, although he and several critics believed his performance to have been overshadowed by that of Kajol. The roles in this phase of his career, and the series of romantic comedies and family dramas that followed, earned Khan widespread adulation from audiences, particularly teenagers, and according to the author Anupama Chopra, established him as an icon of romance in India. He continued to have frequent professional associations with Yash Chopra, Aditya Chopra, and Karan Johar, who moulded his image and made him into a superstar. Khan became a romantic leading man without ever actually kissing any of his co-stars, although he broke this rule in 2012, after strong urging by Yash Chopra. ### 1999–2003: Career fluctuations Khan's only release in 1999 was Baadshah, in which he starred opposite Twinkle Khanna. Although the film underperformed at the box office, it earned him a Filmfare Award nomination for Best Performance in a Comic Role, which he lost to Govinda for Haseena Maan Jaayegi. Khan became a producer in 1999 in a collaboration with the actress Juhi Chawla and the director Aziz Mirza for a production company called Dreamz Unlimited. The company's first production, Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani (2000), starring Khan and Chawla, was a commercial failure. It was released one week after Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai, starring Hrithik Roshan, then a newcomer, who critics believed overshadowed Khan. Swapna Mitter of Rediff.com spoke of Khan's predictable mannerisms, saying "Frankly, it's high time he innovated his act a little." Khan did a supporting role in Kamal Haasan's Hey Ram (2000), which was made simultaneously in Tamil and Hindi. He thereby made his Tamil debut by playing the role of an archaeologist named Amjad Khan. He performed free of charge as he wanted to work with Haasan. On Khan's performance, T. Krithika Reddy of The Hindu wrote, "Shah Rukh Khan, as usual comes up with an impeccable performance." In 2001, Dreamz Unlimited attempted a comeback with Khan portraying the title role in Santosh Sivan's historical epic Aśoka, a partly fictionalised account of the life of emperor Ashoka. The film was screened at the Venice Film Festival and the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival to a positive response, but it performed poorly at Indian box offices. As losses continued to mount for the production company, Khan was forced to close srkworld.com, a company that he had started along with Dreamz Unlimited. In December 2001, Khan suffered a spinal injury while performing an action sequence for a special appearance in Krishna Vamsi's Shakti: The Power. He was subsequently diagnosed with a prolapsed disc, and attempted multiple alternative therapies. None of these provided a permanent solution to the injury, which caused him severe pain while shooting several of his films. By the beginning of 2003, his condition had worsened to the point that he had to undergo anterior cervical discectomy and fusion surgery at Wellington Hospital, London. Khan resumed shooting in June 2003, but he reduced his workload and the number of film roles he accepted annually. Successes during this time included Aditya Chopra's Mohabbatein (2000), and Karan Johar's family drama Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... (2001), which Khan cites as a turning point in his career. Both films co-starred Amitabh Bachchan as an authoritarian figure, and presented ideological struggles between the two men. Khan's performances in the films were met with wide public appreciation, and he was awarded his second Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actor for Mohabbatein. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... remained the top-grossing Indian production of all time in the overseas market for the next five years. In 2002, Khan played the title role as a rebellious alcoholic opposite Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's period romance Devdas. At a cost of over ₹500 million (US$10.29 million), it was the most expensive Bollywood film ever made at the time, and became a box office success, earning approximately ₹1.68 billion ($35 million) worldwide. The film earned numerous accolades including 10 Filmfare Awards, with Best Actor for Khan, and a BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language. Khan next starred in Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), a comedy-drama written by Karan Johar and set in New York City, which became the second-highest-grossing film domestically and the top-grossing Bollywood film in external markets that year. Co-starring with Jaya Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, and Preity Zinta, Khan received critical praise for his portrayal of Aman Mathur, a man with a fatal heart disease, with critics praising his emotional impact upon audiences. Conflict broke out between Khan and the other partners of Dreamz Unlimited over the failure to cast Juhi Chawla in their 2003 production of Aziz Mirza's Chalte Chalte, and they parted ways, despite the film's success. ### 2004–2009: Comeback 2004 was a critically and commercially successful year for Khan. He transformed Dreamz Unlimited into Red Chillies Entertainment, adding his wife Gauri as a producer. In the company's first production, he starred in Farah Khan's directorial debut, the masala film Main Hoon Na. A fictionalised account of India–Pakistan relations, it was viewed by some commentators as a conscious effort to move away from the stereotypical portrayal of Pakistan as the constant villain. Khan then played an Indian Air Force pilot who falls in love with a Pakistani woman (Preity Zinta) in Yash Chopra's romance film Veer-Zaara, which was screened at the 55th Berlin Film Festival to critical praise. It was the highest earning film of 2004 in India, with a worldwide gross of over ₹940 million (US$20.74 million), and Main Hoon Na was the second-highest earner with ₹680 million (US$15.01 million). In his final release of 2004, Khan starred as a NASA scientist who patriotically returns to India to rekindle his roots in Ashutosh Gowariker's social drama Swades (meaning "Homeland"), which became the first Indian picture to be shot inside the NASA research centre at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Film scholar Stephen Teo refers to the picture as an example of "Bollywoodised realism", displaying a transcendence in conventional narrative and audience expectation in Hindi cinema. In December 2013, The Times of India reported that Khan found filming the picture such an emotionally overwhelming and life-changing experience that he had still not viewed the film. Derek Elley of Variety found Khan's performance "unsettling" as "a self-satisfied expatriate determined to bring Western values to poor Indian peasants", but several film critics, including Jitesh Pillai, believed it to have been his finest acting to date. He was nominated for the Filmfare Best Actor Award for all three of his 2004 releases and eventually won the award for Swades. Filmfare later included his performance in the 2010 issue of Bollywood's "Top 80 Iconic Performances". In 2005, Khan starred in Amol Palekar's fantasy drama, Paheli. The film was India's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 79th Academy Awards. He later collaborated with Karan Johar for the third time in the musical romantic drama Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006), in which he played an unhappily married man who has an extramarital affair with a married woman. The film, which featured an ensemble cast including Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Rani Mukerji, Preity Zinta and Kirron Kher, emerged as India's highest-grossing film in the overseas market, earning more than ₹1.13 billion (US$25.62 million) worldwide. Both his roles in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna and the action film Don, a remake of the 1978 film of the same name, earned Khan Best Actor nominations at the Filmfare Awards, despite his performance as the titular character in Don being negatively compared to that of Amitabh Bachchan in the original film. In 2007, Khan portrayed a disgraced hockey player who coached the Indian women's national hockey team to World Cup success in Yash Raj Films' semi-fictional Chak De\! India. Bhaichand Patel notes that Khan, who had a background in the sport playing for his university's hockey team, essentially portrayed himself as a "cosmopolitan, liberal, Indian Muslim". Faring well in both India and abroad, Khan garnered another Filmfare Award for Best Actor for his performance, which Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN considers to have been "without any of his typical trappings, without any of his trademark quirks", portraying Kabir Khan "like a real flesh-and-blood human being". Filmfare included his performance in their 2010 issue of the "Top 80 Iconic Performances". In the same year, Khan starred alongside Arjun Rampal, Deepika Padukone and Shreyas Talpade in Farah Khan's reincarnation melodrama Om Shanti Om, portraying a 1970s junior artiste who is reborn as a 2000s era superstar. The film became the highest grossing Indian motion picture of 2007, both domestically and abroad. Om Shanti Om earned Khan his second nomination of the year for Best Actor at Filmfare. Khalid Mohammed from Hindustan Times wrote, "the enterprise belongs to Shah Rukh Khan, who tackles comedy, high drama and action with his signature style—spontaneous and intuitively intelligent". Khan collaborated for the third time with Aditya Chopra on the romantic comedy Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008) opposite Anushka Sharma, at that time a newcomer. He played Surinder Sahni, a shy man with low self-esteem, whose love for his young arranged wife (Sharma) causes him to transform himself into Raj, a boisterous alter-ego. Rachel Saltz of The New York Times believed the dual role to have been "tailor-made" for Khan, allowing him to display his talents, although Deep Contractor from Epilogue thought Khan displayed greater strength in the role of Surinder and weakness in the role of monologue-prone Raj. In December 2008, Khan suffered a shoulder injury while filming a small role in Mudassar Aziz's Dulha Mil Gaya. He underwent extensive physiotherapy sessions at the time but the pain left him almost immobile and he had arthroscopic surgery in February 2009. He performed a special appearance in the 2009 film Billu, playing Bollywood superstar Sahir Khan—a fictionalised version of himself, wherein he performed musical item numbers with actresses Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, and Deepika Padukone. As head of the film's production company, Red Chillies, Khan made the call to change the title of the film from Billu Barber to Billu after hairdressers across the country complained that the word "barber" was derogatory. The company covered up the offending word on billboards that had already been installed with the original title. ### 2010–2014: Expansion to action and comedy After refusing the role that subsequently went to Anil Kapoor in Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Khan began shooting My Name Is Khan (2010), his fourth collaboration with director Karan Johar and his sixth with Kajol. The film is based on a true story and set against the backdrop of perceptions of Islam after the 11 September attacks. Khan plays Rizwan Khan, a Muslim suffering from mild Asperger syndrome who sets out on a journey across America to meet the country's president, in a role that film scholar Stephen Teo sees as a "symbol of assertive rasa values" and another example of Khan representing NRI identity in global Bollywood. To provide an accurate portrayal of a sufferer without disparagement, Khan spent several months researching his role by reading books, watching videos and talking to people affected by the condition. Upon release, My Name is Khan became one of the highest grossing Bollywood films of all time outside India, and earned Khan his eighth Filmfare Award for Best Actor, equalling the record for the most wins in the category with actor Dilip Kumar. Jay Wesissberg from Variety noted how Khan portrayed the Asperger's sufferer with "averted eyes, springy steps, [and] stuttered repetitions of memorized texts", believing it to have been a "standout performance sure to receive the Autism Society's gold seal of approval". In 2011, Khan starred alongside Arjun Rampal and Kareena Kapoor in Anubhav Sinha's superhero film Ra.One, his first work in this subgenre, as a favour to his children. The film follows the story of a London-based videogame designer who creates a villainous character who escapes into the real world. It was billed as Bollywood's most expensive production; it had an estimated budget of ₹1.25 billion (US$26.78 million). Despite negative media coverage of the film's box office performance, Ra.One was a financial success with a gross of ₹2.4 billion (US$51.42 million). The film, and Khan's portrayal of a dual role, received mixed reviews; while most critics praised his performance as the robotic superhero G.One, though they criticised his portrayal of the videogame designer Shekhar. Khan's second release of 2011 was Don 2, a sequel to Don (2006). To prepare for his role, Khan exercised extensively and performed most of the stunts himself. His performance earned him positive reviews from critics; Nikhat Kazmi of The Times of India said, "Shah Rukh remains in command and never loses his foothold, neither through the dramatic sequences nor through the action cuts". The year's highest grossing Bollywood production abroad, it was showcased at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival. Khan's only release in 2012 was Yash Chopra's last picture, the romantic drama Jab Tak Hai Jaan, which saw him once again in a romantic role, starring opposite Katrina Kaif and Anushka Sharma. CNN-IBN considered the overall performance by Khan to have been one of his finest to date, but believed that Khan's first screen kiss of his career with Katrina Kaif, twenty years his junior, was an awkward one. Jab Tak Hai Jaan was a moderate financial success earning over ₹2.11 billion (US$39.49 million) worldwide. The film was showcased at the 2012 Marrakech International Film Festival in Morocco, along with Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham..., Veer-Zaara, and Don 2. At the following Zee Cine Awards, Khan performed a tribute to the late Yash Chopra along with Kaif, Sharma, and several of Chopra's other past heroines. In 2013, Khan starred in Rohit Shetty's action comedy Chennai Express for Red Chillies Entertainment, a film which earned mixed critical reviews and a fair amount of criticism for its perceived disparagement of South Indian culture, although the film included a tribute to Tamil cinema star Rajinikanth. The critic Khalid Mohamed thought that Khan overacted in the film and criticised him for "re-rendering every old trick in the acting book". Despite the criticism, the film broke many box office records for Hindi films in both India and abroad, surpassing 3 Idiots to briefly become the highest grossing Bollywood film of all time, with a gross of almost ₹4 billion (US$68.26 million) in worldwide ticket sales. On International Women's Day in 2013, The Times of India reported that Khan had requested a new convention with the name of his lead female co-stars appearing above his own in the credits. He claimed that the women in his life, including his co-stars, have been the reason for his success. In 2014, the actor was featured in Farah Khan's ensemble action comedy Happy New Year, which co-starred Deepika Padukone, Abhishek Bachchan and Boman Irani; his third collaboration with the director. Although Khan's unidimensional character was criticised, the film became a major commercial success grossing ₹3.8 billion (US$64.85 million) worldwide. ### 2015–2022: Career setbacks and hiatus Khan next appeared alongside Kajol, Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon in Rohit Shetty's action comedy Dilwale (2015). The film garnered mixed reviews, though it was financially profitable with a gross of ₹3.7 billion (US$57.68 million). Namrata Joshi of The Hindu commented, "With Dilwale, Rohit Shetty goes hopelessly wrong despite much that he had at his disposal, including a power-packed cast and producer", and felt that the attempt to repackage Khan and Kajol had backfired. He then took on dual parts of a superstar and his doppelgänger fan in Maneesh Sharma's action thriller Fan (2016). Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian considered the film to be "exhausting, bizarre yet watchable" and thought that Khan was aptly "creepy" as the obsessive admirer. The film underperformed at the box office, and trade journalists attributed this failure to the film's non-conformity to mainstream formula. Later that year, Khan portrayed the supporting part of a therapist to an aspiring cinematographer (Alia Bhatt) in Gauri Shinde's coming-of-age film Dear Zindagi. In Rahul Dholakia's action crime film Raees (2017), Khan took on the part of the titular anti-hero—a bootlegger turned mobster in 1980s Gujarat. In a typical mixed review, Pratim D. Gupta of The Telegraph thought Khan's performance to be "inconsistent, intense and power-packed at times, but often slipping out of character into his usual mix of stock mannerisms". Commercially, the film was a modest success, earning about ₹3.08 billion (US$47.3 million) worldwide. Khan returned to the romantic genre with the role of a tourist guide who falls in love with a traveller (Anushka Sharma) in Imtiaz Ali's Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017). In a review for Mint, Uday Bhatia criticised Khan's pairing with Sharma, 22 years his junior, writing that Khan had performed "similar gestures of love decades ago to actors his own age". He reunited with Sharma and Katrina Kaif in Aanand L Rai's romantic drama Zero (2018), in which he played Bauua Singh, a dwarf involved in a love triangle. The film received mixed reviews with praise directed to Khan's performance. Writing for Hindustan Times, Raja Sen commended his "dominating performance and tremendous energy" and Anna M. M. Vetticad of Firstpost called him an "excellent fit" for the role for allowing his "naturally energetic personality, comic timing and charm to take flight". Both Jab Harry Met Sejal and Zero were box office flops. According to a Box Office India report, Khan's stardom was impacted by his films failing to do well. Following the release of Zero, Khan took a four-year break from full-time acting, which was partly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in India. He took the time off to attempt a career comeback. During this period, he made extended special appearances in the 2022 films Brahmāstra: Part One – Shiva and Rocketry: The Nambi Effect. ### 2023–present: Resurgence In 2023, Khan reunited with Yash Raj Films in the action thriller Pathaan (2023), set in the YRF Spy Universe, in which he played an exiled field agent assigned to stop a terrorist attack in India. Critic Sukanya Verma took note of Khan's "weathered intensity, grizzly charisma and trademark wit", while Kaveree Bamzai termed it a "much-needed makeover" of an ageing Khan into an action star. Pathaan broke several box-office records, thus re-establishing Khan's stardom. Khan took on another action film role in the same year in Atlee's Jawan, playing father and son doppelgängers. Nandini Ramnath of Scroll.in wrote that "Khan's screen image – expansive, suffused with love, heroic in an old-fashioned way without being aggressively macho, irreverent but also sincere – helps sell a conceit that might have crashed with any other actor". Jawan broke the records set by Pathaan. Both films grossed over ₹10 billion (US$120 million) to rank, respectively, as Hindi cinema's second and third biggest grossers worldwide, making Khan the first Indian actor to deliver two films that earned over ₹10 billion. In his final release of 2023, Khan starred in Rajkumar Hirani's Dunki, a social drama about an illegal immigration technique named donkey flight. Uday Bhatia wrote that his role as a "romantic feminist soldier patriot friend" marked "a break from Khan the action star but offers no respite from the Khan the perfect screen idol". Grossing over ₹4 billion (US$48 million), Dunki emerged as Khan's third consecutive commercial success of the year, although it did not match up to the record grosses of Pathaan or Jawan. ## Other work ### Film production and television hosting Khan co-produced three films from 1999 to 2003 as a founding member of the partnership Dreamz Unlimited. After the partnership was dissolved, he and Gauri restructured the company as Red Chillies Entertainment, which includes divisions dealing with film and television production, visual effects, and advertising. As of 2015, the company has produced or co-produced at least nine films. Either Khan or Gauri are usually given production credits, and he has appeared in most of the films, either in the lead role, or in a guest appearance. Khan was involved in several aspects of the making of Ra.One (2011). Aside from acting, he produced the film, volunteered to write the console game script, dubbed for it, oversaw its technical development, and wrote the digital comics based on the film's characters. Khan has occasionally done playback singing for his films. In Josh (2000) he sang the popular song "Apun Bola Tu Meri Laila". He also sang in Don (2006) and Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012). For Always Kabhi Kabhi (2011), which was produced by Red Chillies, Khan participated in the lyrical composition. In addition to his early television serial appearances, Khan has hosted numerous televised awards shows, including the Filmfare, Zee Cine, and Screen Awards. In 2007, he replaced Amitabh Bachchan for one season as the host of Kaun Banega Crorepati, the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and a year later, Khan began hosting Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass Se Tez Hain?, the Indian version of Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?. In 2011, he returned to television, appearing on Imagine TV's Zor Ka Jhatka: Total Wipeout, the Indian version of Wipeout; scenes featuring Khan were shot at the Yash Raj Studios in Mumbai. Contrary to his earlier television anchoring jobs, Zor Ka Jhatka: Total Wipeout performed poorly. It aired for only one season and became the lowest rated show hosted by a Bollywood star. In 2017, Khan began hosting TED Talks India Nayi Soch, a talk show produced by TED Conferences, LLC which started aired on STAR Plus. ### Stage performances Khan is a frequent stage performer and has participated in several world tours and concerts. In 1997, he performed in Asha Bhosle's Moments in Time concert in Malaysia, and returned the following year to perform with Karisma Kapoor for the Shahrukh–Karisma: Live in Malaysia concert. The same year, he participated in The Awesome Foursome world tour across the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States along with Juhi Chawla, Akshay Kumar and Kajol, and resumed the tour in Malaysia the following year. In 2002, Khan featured with Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Preity Zinta, and Aishwarya Rai in the show From India With Love at Manchester's Old Trafford and London's Hyde Park; the event was attended by more than 100,000 people. Khan performed alongside Rani Mukherji, Arjun Rampal and Ishaa Koppikar in a 2010 concert at the St. Joseph High School field in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The next year he joined Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra in the Friendship Concert, celebrating 150 years of India–South Africa friendship in Durban, South Africa. Khan started an association with the "Temptations" series of concert tours by singing, dancing, and performing skits alongside Arjun Rampal, Priyanka Chopra, and other Bollywood stars in Temptations 2004, a stage show that toured 22 venues across the world. The show played to 15,000 spectators at Dubai's Festival City Arena. In 2008, Khan set up Temptation Reloaded, a series of concerts that toured several countries, including the Netherlands. Another tour was held with Bipasha Basu and others in 2012 in Jakarta, and in 2013 another series of concerts visited Auckland, Perth and Sydney. In 2014, Khan performed in SLAM\! The Tour in the US, Canada, and London, and also hosted the Indian premiere of the live talent show, Got Talent World Stage Live. ### Ownership of Kolkata Knight Riders In 2008, Khan, in partnership with Juhi Chawla and her husband Jay Mehta, acquired ownership rights for the franchise representing Kolkata in the Twenty20 cricket tournament Indian Premier League (IPL) for US$75.09 million, and named the team Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). As of 2009, KKR was one of the richest teams in the IPL, with a brand value of US$42.1 million. The team performed poorly on the field during the first three years. Their performance improved over time, and they became the champions for the first time in 2012 and repeated the feat in 2014. The Knight Riders hold the record for the longest winning streak by any Indian team in T20s (14). They won their third IPL title in the 2024 edition. Khan performed alongside Sunidhi Chauhan and Shriya Saran at the opening ceremony of the IPL 2011 season, where they danced to Tamil songs. He appeared again in 2013 alongside Katrina Kaif, Deepika Padukone and Pitbull. In May 2012, the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) banned him from the Wankhede Stadium for five years for getting into an argument with the security staff after a match between KKR and the Mumbai Indians. Khan had, however, stated that he acted only after children, including his daughter, were being "manhandled" by the security staff and that the officials were extremely high-handed and aggressive in their behaviour, he had been abused with communal indecent comment. Later MCA officials had accused him of being drunk in one version of the story, hitting the guard and of completely uncharacteristically abusing a female supporter of Mumbai Indians after the match in another version of the story, which Khan had maintained it was done to support their action and for cheap publicity. Wankhede guard later contradicted MCA officials' claim and said Shah Rukh Khan had not hit him. Khan later apologised to his fans after his team won the final match. MCA revoked the ban in 2015 and in 2016, Mumbai Police informed that no 'cognisable offence' was made out against Khan and they had come to the conclusion that Shah Rukh Khan was not drunk and did not use abusive language before minors at the Wankhede Stadium in 2012. ## In the media Khan receives a considerable amount of media coverage in India, and is often referred to as "King Khan", "The Baadshah of Bollywood", or "The King of Bollywood". Anupama Chopra cites him as an "ever present celebrity", with two or three films a year, constantly running television ads, print ads, and gigantic billboards lining the streets of Indian cities. He is the object of a sometimes fanatical following, with a fan base estimated to exceed one billion. Newsweek named Khan as one of their fifty most powerful people globally in 2008 and called him "the world's biggest movie star". In 2011 he was described as "the biggest movie star you've never heard of...perhaps the world's biggest movie star, period" by Steven Zeitchik of the Los Angeles Times and has been called the world's biggest movie star in other international media outlets. According to a popularity survey, 3.2 billion people around the world know Khan, more than who know Tom Cruise. In a 2022 readers' poll by Empire magazine, Khan was listed as one of the 50 greatest actors of all time. The magazine attributed his success to the "outrageous amounts of [his] charisma and absolute mastery of [his] craft. Comfortable in almost every genre going, there's pretty much nothing he can't do." In 2023, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and he topped the list per a readers poll. Khan is one of the wealthiest celebrities in India, topping the Forbes India's "Celebrity 100 list" in 2012, 2013 and 2015. His wealth has been estimated at US$400–600 million. Khan owns several properties in India and abroad, including a apartment in London, and a villa on the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai. From 2023–2024, Khan ranked as the highest tax payer in India. Khan frequently appears on listings of the most popular, stylish and influential people in India. He has regularly featured among the top ten on The Times of India's list of the 50 most desirable men in India, and in a 2007 poll by the magazine Eastern Eye he was named the sexiest man in Asia. Khan is often referred to as "Brand SRK" by media organisations because of his many brand endorsement and entrepreneurship ventures. He is one of the highest paid Bollywood endorsers and one of the most visible celebrities in television advertising, with up to a six per cent share of the television advertisement market. Khan has endorsed brands including Pepsi, Nokia, Hyundai, Dish TV, D'decor, LUX and TAG Heuer. Books have been published about him, and his popularity has been documented in several non-fiction films, including the two-part documentary The Inner and Outer World of Shah Rukh Khan (2005), and the Discovery Travel & Living channel's ten-part miniseries Living with a Superstar—Shah Rukh Khan (2010). In 2007, Khan became the third Indian actor to have his wax statue installed at London's Madame Tussauds museum, after Aishwarya Rai and Amitabh Bachchan. Additional versions of the statue were installed at Madame Tussauds' museums in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, New York and Washington. Khan has been brand ambassador of various governmental campaigns, including Pulse Polio and the National AIDS Control Organisation. He is a member of the board of directors of the Make-A-Wish Foundation in India, and in 2011 he was appointed by UNOPS as the first global ambassador of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council. He has recorded a series of public service announcements championing good health and proper nutrition, and joined India's Health Ministry and UNICEF in a nationwide child immunisation campaign. In 2011, he received UNESCO's Pyramide con Marni award for his charitable commitment to provide education for children, becoming the first Indian to win the accolade. In 2014, Khan became the ambassador for Interpol's campaign "Turn Back Crime". In 2015, Khan received a privileged degree from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2018, Khan was honoured by the World Economic Forum with their annual Crystal Award for his leadership in championing children's and women's rights in India. In October 2019, Khan featured in a video launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to pay tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary. The preview of the video, which took place on 20 October 2019 at PMO, was attended by Khan, along with Aamir Khan, Kangana Ranaut, Rajkumar Hirani, Jacqueline Fernandez, Sonam Kapoor, Ekta Kapoor, Varun Sharma, Jackie Shroff, Imtiaz Ali, Sonu Nigam, Kapil Sharma, and many other dignitaries. Khan's distinctive voice and mannerisms have inspired many imitators and voice actors. In the Hindi-dubbed version of the cartoon series Oggy and the Cockroaches, Saurav Chakrabarti emulates Khan's voice for the character Oggy. In April 2020, Khan announced a series of initiatives to help the government of India and the state governments of Maharashtra, West Bengal and Delhi mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic as well as relief measures for thousands of underprivileged people and daily wage labourers affected by the lockdown. He offered his 4-storey personal office space to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to be used as a quarantine centre for coronavirus patients. ## Awards and recognitions Khan is one of the most decorated Bollywood actors. He has received 14 Filmfare Awards from 30 nominations and special awards, including winning eight for Best Actor; he is tied for the most in this category with Dilip Kumar. Khan has won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor for his performances in Baazigar (1993), Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Devdas (2002), Swades (2004), Chak De\! India (2007) and My Name Is Khan (2010). Although he has never won a National Film Award, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2005. The Government of France has awarded him both the Order of Arts and Letters (2007), and the fifth degree of the French Legion of Honour, the Chevalier Légion d'honneur (2014). Khan has received five honorary doctorates; the first from The University of Bedfordshire in 2009, the second from The University of Edinburgh in 2015, the third from Maulana Azad National Urdu University in 2016, and his latest from The University of Law and La Trobe University in 2019. ## Personal life Khan married Gauri Chibber, a Punjabi Hindu, in a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony on 25 October 1991, after a six-year courtship. They have a son Aryan (born 1997) and a daughter Suhana (born 2000). In 2013, they became parents of a third child who was born through a surrogate mother. Both his elder children have expressed interest in entering the entertainment industry; Khan has stated that Aryan, who studied filmmaking at the USC School of Cinematic Arts in California, aspires to become a writer-director, while Suhana, who served as assistant director for Khan's film Zero (2018), is studying drama and acting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts for higher education. Suhana made her acting debut in November 2019, in a short film titled "The Grey Part of Blue." According to Khan, while he strongly believes in Islam, he also values his wife's religion. His children follow both religions; at his home the Qur'an is situated next to the murti of Hindu deities. Although Khan was given the birth name Shahrukh Khan, he prefers his name to be written as Shah Rukh Khan, and is commonly referred to by the initialism SRK. Khan was named one of "The 10 Most Handsome Men in the World" in 2024, in a list that included Aaron Taylor-Johnson and George Clooney. ## See also - Khans of Bollywood - List of awards and nominations received by Shah Rukh Khan

Two-cent piece (United States)

Coin of the United States (1864–1873)

The two-cent piece was produced by the Mint of the United States for circulation from 1864 to 1872 and for collectors in 1873. Designed by James B. Longacre, there were decreasing mintages each year, as other minor coins such as the nickel proved more popular. It was abolished by the Mint Act of 1873. The economic turmoil of the American Civil War caused government-issued coins, even the non-silver Indian Head cent, to vanish from circulation, hoarded by the public. One means of filling this gap was private token issues, often made of bronze. The cent at that time was struck of a copper-nickel alloy, the same diameter as the later Lincoln cent, but somewhat thicker. The piece was difficult for the Philadelphia Mint to strike, and Mint officials, as well as the annual Assay Commission, recommended the coin's replacement. Despite opposition from those wishing to keep the metal nickel in the coinage, led by Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1864, authorizing bronze cents and two-cent pieces. Although initially popular in the absence of other federal coinage, the two-cent piece's place in circulation was usurped by other base-metal coins which Congress subsequently authorized, the three-cent piece and the nickel. It was abolished in 1873; large quantities were redeemed by the government and melted. Nevertheless, two-cent pieces remain relatively inexpensive by the standards of 19th-century American coinage. ## Inception A two-cent piece had been proposed in 1806 by Connecticut Senator Uriah Tracy, along with a twenty-cent piece or "double dime". Reflecting the then-prevalent view that coins should contain their value in metal, Tracy's bill provided that the two-cent piece be made of billon, or debased silver. The bill was opposed by Mint Director Robert Patterson, as it would be difficult to refine the silver from melted-down pieces. Although Tracy's legislation passed the Senate twice, in 1806 and 1807, it failed in the House of Representatives. Patterson sent a brass button with two of the billon planchets that would have been used for the coin to Tracy, showing how hard it would be to prevent counterfeiting. The Mint considered a two-cent piece in 1836, and experiments were conducted by Second Engraver Christian Gobrecht and Melter and Refiner Franklin Peale. The piece was to be again of billon, and provision for the coin was included in early drafts of the Mint Act of 1837, but the proposal was dropped when Peale was able to show that the coin could be easily counterfeited. Until 1857, the cent coin was a large copper piece, containing about its face value in metal. These coins were unpopular, and in 1857, after receiving congressional approval, the Mint began issuing the Flying Eagle cent, of the diameter of the later Lincoln cent, but somewhat thicker and made of copper-nickel alloy. These pieces readily circulated, and although the design did not strike well and was replaced by the Indian Head cent in 1859, the coins were commonly used until all federal coinage vanished from circulation in much of the United States in 1861 and 1862, during the economic turmoil of the American Civil War. This happened because many Northerners feared that if the war went poorly, paper money and government bonds might become worthless. The gap was filled by, among other things, private token issues, sometimes in copper-nickel approximating the size of the cent, but often thinner pieces in bronze. This fact did not escape government officials, and when, in 1863, they attempted to restore coins to circulation, the use of bronze coins, which would not contain their face values in metal, was considered. In his annual report submitted October 1, 1863, Mint Director James Pollock noted that "whilst people expect a full value in their gold and silver coins, they merely want the inferior [base metal] money for convenience in making exact payments". He observed that the private cent tokens had sometimes contained as little as a fifth of a cent in metal, yet had still circulated. He proposed that the copper-nickel cent be replaced with a bronze piece of the same size. Pollock also wanted to eliminate nickel as a coinage metal; its hard alloys destroyed dies and machinery. On December 8, Pollock wrote to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, proposing a bronze cent and two-cent piece, and enclosing pattern coins of the two-cent piece that he had had prepared. According to numismatist Neil Carothers, a two-cent piece was most likely proposed in order to get as much dollar value in small change into circulation in as short a time as possible, as the Mint could strike a two-cent piece as easily as a cent. ## Legislation On March 2, 1864, Pollock wrote urgently to Chase, warning him that the Mint was running out of nickel and that demand for cents was at an all-time high. He also informed the Secretary that the United States Assay Commission, composed of citizens and officials who had met the previous month to test the nation's silver and gold coinage, had recommended the use of French bronze (95% copper with the remainder tin and zinc) as a coinage metal for the cent and a new two-cent piece. Three days later, Chase sent Pollock's December letter and draft legislation for bronze one- and two-cent pieces to Maine Senator William P. Fessenden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Fessenden took no immediate action, and on March 16, Pollock wrote again to Chase, warning that the Mint was going to run out of nickel, much of which was imported. Chase forwarded his letter to Fessenden. Legislation was finally introduced by New Hampshire Senator Daniel Clark on March 22; Pollock's letters were read and apparently influenced proceedings as the Senate passed the bill without debate. The domestic supply of nickel was at that time produced by a mine at Gap, Pennsylvania, owned by industrialist Joseph Wharton. On March 19, Pollock wrote to Chase that they had no more nickel, nor was any available from overseas; "we are thus shut up to the home supply; from the works of Mr. Wharton". Opposed to the removal of nickel from the cent, Wharton published a pamphlet in April 1864 proposing coinage of one-, two-, three-, five-, and ten-cent pieces of an alloy of one part nickel to three of copper, doubling the percentage of nickel used in the cent. Despite Wharton's efforts, on April 20, a select committee of the House of Representatives endorsed the bill. It was opposed by Pennsylvania's Thaddeus Stevens, who represented the mining area from which Wharton extracted his nickel. Wharton had spent $200,000 to develop his mine and ore refinement machinery, Stevens related, and it was unfair to deprive him of the major use of his metal. "Shall we destroy all this property because by coining with another metal more money may be saved to the government?" Besides, he argued, the copper-nickel alloy for the cent had been approved by Congress, and the new metal, which he termed "brass", would show rust. He was rebutted by Iowa Congressman John A. Kasson, chairman of the House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, who stated that the bronze alloy did not resemble brass, and he could not support the proposition that the government is bound to purchase from a supplier because he has spent money in anticipation of sales. The legislation passed the House, and the Coinage Act of 1864 was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on April 22, 1864. The legislation made base metal coins legal tender for the first time: both cents and two-cent pieces were acceptable in quantities of up to ten. The government would not, however, redeem them in bulk. The act also outlawed the private one- and two-cent tokens, and later that year Congress abolished all such issues. The legislation did not allow for the redemption of the old copper-nickel cents; it had been drafted by Pollock, who was hoping that the seignorage income from issuing the new coins would help finance Mint operations, and he did not want it reduced by the recall of the old pieces. Wharton and his interests were appeased by the passage of a bill for a three-cent piece in 1865 and a five-cent piece in 1866, both of his proposed alloy, out of which the "nickel", as the latter coin has come to be known, is still struck. ## Design In late 1861, the Reverend Mark R. Watkinson of Ridleyville, Pennsylvania, had written to Chase, proposing that some reference to God be placed on the coinage in that time of war, and on November 20 of that year, Chase wrote to Mint Director Pollock, "No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins. You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest tersest terms possible this national recognition." Several mottoes were considered by Pollock, including "God Our Trust" and "God and Our Country". Some of the patterns he sent Chase in December 1863 used "God Our Trust", and he wrote of the design, "the devices are beautiful and appropriate, and the motto on each such, as all who fear God and love their country, will approve." He also sent pattern coins depicting George Washington; Chase responded to the letter, "I approve your mottoes, only suggesting that on that with the Washington obverse the motto should begin with the word OUR, so as to read OUR GOD AND OUR COUNTRY. And on that with the shield, it should be changed so as to read: IN GOD WE TRUST." Pollock had been inspired by "The Star-Spangled Banner", a later stanza of which includes the line, "And this be our motto, 'In God Is Our Trust' ". Chase may have been influenced in his decision by the motto of his alma mater, Brown University, In Deo Speramus (In God We Hope). As the mottoes to be placed on coinage were prescribed by the 1837 act, a legislative change was needed. The act which created the two-cent piece authorized the Mint Director, with the Secretary of the Treasury's approval, to prescribe the designs and mottoes to be used. Longacre's two-cent piece was the first coin inscribed with "In God We Trust". The motto was popularized by the new coin; on March 3, 1865, Congress passed legislation ordering its use on all coins large enough to permit it. Since 1938, "In God We Trust" has been used on all American coins. The obverse design is a Longacre version of the Great Seal of the United States. His design focuses on the shield, or escutcheon, as a defensive weapon, signifying strength and self-protection through unity. The upper part of the shield, or "chief", symbolizes Congress, while the 13 vertical stripes, or "paleways", represent the thirteen original states. Consequently, the entire escutcheon symbolizes the strength of the federal government through the unity of the states. The crossed arrows represent nonaggression, but imply readiness against attack. The laurel branches, taken from Greek tradition, symbolize victory. In heraldic engraving, vertical lines represent red, clear areas white and horizontal lines blue, thus the escutcheon is colored red, white and blue and is meant to evoke the American flag. The reverse contains the denomination "2 CENTS" within a somewhat ornate wheat wreath. The rest of the coin is filled with the name of the country. Art historian Cornelius Vermeule deemed the two-cent piece "the most Gothic and the most expressive of the Civil War" of all American coins. "The shield, arrows, and wreath of the obverse need only flanking cannon to be the consummate expression of Civil War heraldry." Vermeule suggested that the coin appears calligraphic, rather than sculptural, and ascribed this to Longacre's early career as a plate engraver. ## Production and collecting A few thousand of the first circulation strikes, as well as a handful of proof coins, came from a prototype die with smaller letters in the motto than all other 1864 pieces. Although specimens of the two-cent piece, being of base metal, were not set aside for testing by the annual Assay Commission, Congress did order that internal checks be done at the Mint as to their composition and weight. The two-cent piece was at first a success, circulating freely once enough of them were issued to be recognized by the public. It initially circulated because of the wartime coin shortage, which was alleviated by the new cent and two-cent piece. Although Pollock reported hoarding of cents in his June 1864 report, he did not thereafter mention such activities. Silver coins still did not circulate in much of the nation, and the new coins (joined by the three- and five-cent pieces of copper-nickel, first struck in 1865 and 1866 respectively) answered the need for small change. In October 1864, he reported that the demand for both coins had been unprecedented and that every effort was being made to increase production; in his report the next June, he called the two-cent piece "a most convenient and popular coin". The Act of March 3, 1865, that provided for the three-cent nickel piece, reduced the legal tender limit of the bronze coins to four cents, while making the newly authorized coin acceptable up to sixty cents. After the large mintage of just under twenty million in the first year, according to numismatist Q. David Bowers, "enthusiasm and public acceptance waned". After the war, bank demand for the denomination dropped, while demand for the new five-cent nickel increased; mintages of the two-cent piece were smaller every year. Lange notes, "it was evident by the end of the 1860s that its coinage was no longer necessary". According to Carothers, "the coinage of a 2 cent piece was unnecessary. While it was popular at first because of the great public demand for metallic small change, it was a superfluous denomination, and its circulation waned rapidly after the 5 cent nickel coin was introduced." Beginning in 1867, the new Mint Director, Henry Linderman, (Pollock had resigned) began to advocate for Congress to authorize redemption of surplus copper and bronze coinage. Although the nickel could be redeemed in lots (permission granted in its authorizing act), there was no provision for the government to buy back the smaller coins, and with more being issued every year, there were too many small-value coins. Treasury officials insisted the government could not accept the pieces beyond their legal tender limits, even if what was being done was exchanging them for other currency. Under Linderman, the Mint, without any legal authority, purchased $360,000 in bronze coins using three-cent pieces and nickels. Still, millions of two-cent pieces accumulated in the hands of newspaper and transit companies, postmasters, and others who took small payments from the public, and there were complaints to Congress. With the advent of the Grant administration, Pollock returned to office and opposed the redemption proposals. Although he included Pollock's opinions as part of his annual report, Treasury Secretary George S. Boutwell asked Congress to pass a redemption act, and it did so on March 3, 1871, allowing for the redemption of minor coinage in lots of not less than $20. It also allowed the Treasury Secretary to discontinue the coinage of any piece redeemed in large numbers. Pursuant to the new law, the Mint in 1871 and 1872 redeemed over 37,000,000 small coins, including two-cent pieces. In the postwar years, Congress and the Treasury considered a revision of the coinage laws, as the act of 1837 was deemed outdated. Retention of the two-cent piece was never seriously considered in the debates over what became the Mint Act of 1873; the only question concerning the minor coinage was whether to make the cent from bronze or copper-nickel, and how large to make the three-cent nickel. With those pieces remaining unchanged, the bill passed on February 12, 1873, putting an end to the two-cent piece series. With the two-cent piece likely to be abolished, only 65,000 were struck for circulation in 1872; it is unclear why they were struck at all. On January 18, 1873, Philadelphia Mint Chief Coiner Archibald Loudon Snowden complained that the "3" in the date, as struck by the Mint, too closely resembled an "8", especially on the smaller-sized denominations. In response, Pollock ordered the new chief engraver, William Barber (Longacre had died in 1869), to re-engrave the date, opening the arms of the "3" wider on most denominations. The two-cent piece was struck only in proof condition in 1873, and due to its February abolition, there should not have been time or reason for Barber to re-engrave the coin. Nevertheless, it exists in "Closed 3" and "Open 3" varieties. Breen suggested that the "Open 3" variety was actually struck at a later date, probably clandestinely; it was not known to exist until discovered by a numismatist in the 1950s. Numismatist Paul Green ascribed the two varieties to the two types of proof sets that the Mint sold at the time that would have contained the two-cent piece. The "nickel set" contained only the low-value coins without precious metal, while another contained also the silver coins; he suggested that one variety was struck for each. Large quantities of two-cent pieces were withdrawn in the 1870s and after. Approximately 17,000,000 of the some 45,600,000 two-cent pieces issued had been repurchased by the Treasury as of 1909. Withdrawn pieces were melted and recoined into one-cent pieces. A bill for a two-cent piece bearing the portrait of recently deceased former president Theodore Roosevelt passed the Senate in 1920 and was strongly recommended by a House committee but never enacted. Numismatist S. W. Freeman noted in 1954 that few alive could remember using a two-cent piece, but for those who did, it was often associated with spending it at a candy store. He recalled that two cents would buy a quantity of sweets, as a dime did in Freeman's day, and, he feared, it would take a quarter to do in the future. Full legal tender status was confirmed for the two-cent piece by the Coinage Act of 1965, long after the coin had passed from circulation, as it made all coins and currency of the United States good for all public and private debts without limit. Nevertheless, numismatist Jack White pointed out in a 1971 column that due to its short lifespan, the piece "hardly got its two cents in". R.S. Yeoman's 2018 edition of A Guide Book of United States Coins lists the 1864 large motto and the 1865 as the least expensive two-cent pieces, in good (G-4) condition at $15, though every issue by year through 1871 lists for $40 or less in that condition. The reason for the relatively flat prices, even in top grades, is a lack of collectors who seek the entire series (it is most popularly collected with a single specimen as part of a "type set" of the various issues of American coins). Despite the high mintage, it is the 1864 date that has one of the more highly valued varieties, the "small motto". Yeoman lists the 1864 small motto in Proof condition, at $20,000 and in Very Fine (VF-20) it is $600. ## Mintage figures All two-cent pieces were minted at the Philadelphia Mint, and bear no mint mark. Proof mintages are estimated. ## See also - Three-cent piece - Penny, the one-cent piece - Half-cent piece

Hurricane Hector (2018)

Category 4 Pacific hurricane

Hurricane Hector was a powerful and long-lasting tropical cyclone that traversed the Pacific Ocean during late July and August 2018. Hector was the eighth named storm, fourth hurricane, and third major hurricane of the 2018 Pacific hurricane season. It originated from a disturbance that was located north of South America on July 22. The disturbance tracked westward and entered the eastern Pacific around July 25. It gradually organized over the next several days, becoming a tropical depression at 12:00 UTC on July 31. The system was upgraded into a tropical storm about 12 hours later and received the name Hector. Throughout most of its existence, the cyclone traveled due west or slightly north of west. A favorable environment allowed the fledgling tropical storm to rapidly intensify to its initial peak as a Category 2 hurricane by 18:00 UTC on August 2. Wind shear caused Hector to weaken for a brief period before the storm began to strengthen again. Hector reached Category 3 status by 00:00 UTC on August 4 and went through an eyewall replacement cycle soon after, which caused the intensification to halt. After the replacement cycle, the cyclone continued to organize, developing a well-defined eye surrounded by cold cloud tops. Hector crossed the 140th meridian west, entering the central Pacific Ocean early on August 6 as a Category 4 hurricane. It reached its peak intensity around 18:00 UTC that day, with winds of 155 mph (249 km/h) and a pressure of 936 mbar (27.64 inHg). Hector's intensity fluctuated between Category 3 and Category 4 over the next several days as a result of eyewall replacement cycles and changing environmental conditions. The hurricane passed south of Hawaii's Big Island on August 8. Strong wind shear caused Hector to weaken rapidly and take on a more northwestward track after August 11. It fell below major hurricane intensity around 18:00 UTC on August 11. Hector had spent 186 hours at that intensity – longer than any other hurricane on record in the eastern Pacific basin. The structure of the storm rapidly deteriorated as Hector approached the International Date Line; it weakened into a tropical storm by 00:00 UTC on August 13. Hector crossed into the western Pacific Ocean during the middle of the day. The tropical storm then moved generally westward while continuing to decay. It weakened into a tropical depression by midnight UTC on August 15 and dissipated the next day around 18:00 UTC. The impact on land from the storm was minimal. Hector did not make landfall, but as it approached Hawaii, tropical storm watches and warnings were issued for the Big Island, as well as tropical storm watches for the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Hector caused high surf as it passed by to the south of the main islands, necessitating the rescue of several dozen people on Oahu. ## Origins, development, and initial peak Hurricane Hector's origins can be traced to a low-latitude disturbance that was located north of French Guiana and Suriname around July 22. The disturbance's path prior to that time is uncertain: thunderstorm activity was subdued across the tropical Atlantic due to the presence of dry Saharan air, and the Intertropical Convergence Zone dipped southward and exhibited no fluctuations; this combination of events made it impossible to trace the disturbance to a particular tropical wave. Hector's precursor began producing convection while traveling westward over northern South America, entering the Eastern Pacific basin by July 25. A low-pressure trough formed on the next day south of Central America and southern Mexico. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) first mentioned the possibility of tropical development on July 26. Located within a favorable environment fueled by a kelvin wave and the Madden–Julian oscillation, the disturbance gradually became more organized over the next five days as it continued generally westward. The system developed into Tropical Depression Ten-E around 12:00 UTC on July 31 while about 805 mi (1,296 km) south-southwest of the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula. At that time, the system was traveling west-northwest under the influence of a deep-layer ridge to its north. Initially, the depression was irregularly shaped and its circulation elongated, but it steadily improved in organization over the next 12 hours, becoming Tropical Storm Hector at 00:00 UTC on August 1. After strengthening into a tropical storm, Hector remained disorganized for several hours as a result of increasing easterly wind shear, with most of its convection displaced to the south and west. Warm sea surface temperatures of 81–82 °F (27–28 °C) allowed Hector to begin a 30-hour period of rapid intensification at 12:00 UTC. Around that time, the low- and mid-level centers were becoming more aligned and curved banding features were increasing. The system also turned westward as the aforementioned ridge built to the north of Hector. Over the next several hours, Hector significantly improved in organization, with its low-level center becoming markedly embedded within the deep convection and the development of a mid-level eye. Hector intensified into a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale around 12:00 UTC, developing a small eye on satellite imagery. Six hours later, the storm reached its initial peak intensity as a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (169 km/h) and a minimum central pressure of 975 mbar (28.79 inHg). Shortly thereafter, Hector began weakening, with its eye becoming cloud-filled and the northern eyewall eroding due to northerly shear. Hector's structure continued to degrade over the next several hours with the eye becoming nearly indistinguishable from its surroundings and the formation of a secondary concentric eyewall structure. The storm bottomed out as a Category 1 hurricane at approximately 12:00 UTC on August 3 as it continued to travel due west. ## Strengthening and peak intensity Hector began to strengthen a short time later as it traversed an area of slightly cooler sea temperatures, low wind shear, and elevated mid-level moisture. The storm's eye cleared out on satellite imagery as convection intensified in the eyewall. Hector became a Category 3 major hurricane around 00:00 UTC on August 4, while located approximately 1,680 mi (2,700 km) west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California. Later in the day, the system began to undergo an eyewall replacement cycle. Six hours later, around 18:00 UTC, the eyewall cycle had completed, with only one eyewall remaining. At that time, the cyclone was also beginning to acquire some annular characteristics. The hurricane's structure began to decay on August 5, with the eye becoming less distinct by 12:00 UTC. Meanwhile, microwave imagery showed two concentric eyewalls, indicating that Hector was entering a second eyewall replacement cycle. Hector became a Category 4 hurricane at 18:00 UTC after completing the eyewall cycle. The hurricane exhibited a symmetric central dense overcast with few banding features elsewhere, a characteristic of an annular tropical cyclone. Hector began to move slightly north of west due to a weakness in a subtropical ridge located to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands. The hurricane crossed the 140th meridian west shortly after 06:00 UTC on August 6, entering the Central Pacific Hurricane Center's (CPHC) area of responsibility. At that time, Hector possessed a distinct eye surrounded by −94 to −112 °F (−70 to −80 °C) clouds. About six hours later, a 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron plane recorded a stepped frequency microwave radiometer (SFMR) wind speed of 158 mph (254 km/h) as it surveyed the cyclone. Hector reached its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph (249 km/h) and a minimum central pressure of 936 mbar (27.64 inHg) around 18:00 UTC. The storm turned towards the west-northwest shortly after as the ridge continued to weaken. The hurricane maintained peak intensity for about six hours before beginning to weaken as it entered an area of mid-level dry air. Despite slightly degrading in structure, Hector still maintained a 12 mi (19 km) wide eye. ## Passage south of Hawaii and secondary peak As Hector approached Hawaii, its weakening trend continued due to mid-level dry air, low ocean heat content, and 81 °F (27 °C) sea surface temperatures. The hurricane's eye shrank and became nearly indistinguishable from surrounding clouds on satellite imagery as the system tracked westward. Hector weakened into a low-end Category 3 hurricane as it passed about 230 mi (370 km) south of the Big Island on August 8. WSR-88D radar from Hawaii as well as microwave and satellite imagery showed Hector was undergoing a third eyewall replacement cycle during that time. Hurricane Hector warranted the issuance of tropical storm watches and warnings from August 6–8 as it passed near the Big Island, as well as tropical storm watches for Johnston Atoll and various islands in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument from August 9–13. Although forecasts depicted Hector remaining south of Hawaii, concerns were raised over the safety of residents displaced by the ongoing eruption of Kīlauea, many of whom were in temporary tent structures that could not withstand a hurricane. Plans were made to relocate people to sturdier structures. Overall, the impact to Hawaii was minimal; peak 2-minute sustained winds of 25 mph (40 km/h) were recorded in South Point on the Big Island and 0.17 in (4.3 mm) of rain registered at Hilo International Airport. The ports of Hilo and Kawaihae were closed on August 7 to inbound traffic as gale-force winds were expected to occur within the next 24 hours. All Hawaiian ports resumed normal operations on August 10. Also on August 8, the acting mayor of Hawaii County, Wil Okabe, declared a state of emergency. As the hurricane passed south of the island on August 8, all absentee walk-in voting sites in Hawaii County were shut down. Whittington, Punaluu, and Milolii Beach Parks were also closed. At the same time, surf was reported along the south-facing shores of the Big Island as 20 ft (6.1 m) high. At least 90 people had to be rescued on Oahu due to dangerous swells generated by the cyclone. After passing by Hawaii, Hector began another period of strengthening on August 9 as it moved across a region of slightly warmer sea surface temperatures and higher ocean heat content. The temperature of the hurricane's eye increased and the cloud tops of the eyewall cooled after the completion of the replacement cycle. Hector reached its secondary peak as a Category 4 hurricane around 18:00 UTC on August 10 with 140 mph (230 km/h) winds. Around that time, the system had begun a west-northwest motion as it rounded the edge of a subtropical ridge that was located northeast. ## Weakening and demise Hector began to weaken once more as an upper-level low located just east of the International Date Line imparted southerly shear and caused the cyclone to take on a more northwesterly track. As a result, the storm's eye became cloud-filled on August 11. Hector fell below major hurricane status around 18:00 UTC on August 11, the first time the hurricane had done so after spending a record 186 consecutive hours at that intensity. By early August 12, the hurricane's eye had become invisible on satellite imagery and only a region of warmer cloud tops remained on infrared imagery. Hector began to rapidly weaken soon after as wind shear increased further to 35 mph (56 km/h); the appearance of the cyclone quickly deteriorated as a result. Later in the day, Hector's low-level center became displaced to the south of its thunderstorm activity as strong wind shear continued to bombard the system. Hector weakened into a tropical storm around 00:00 UTC on August 13. Convection associated with Hector began to dissipate on August 13, leaving the low-level center uncovered; all that remained were regions of cirrus clouds. Hector crossed into the western Pacific Ocean shortly after 15:00 UTC on August 13 as a weakening tropical storm, entering the Japan Meteorological Agency's (JMA) area of responsibility. Around that time, bursts of convection had formed northwest of the low-level center. At the time Hector left the eastern Pacific basin, it had the highest accumulated cyclone energy of a Pacific hurricane since 1994's Hurricane John. Once Hector crossed the International Date Line, the JMA recognized it as a tropical storm with 45 mph (72 km/h) 10-minute sustained winds. Meanwhile, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) estimated that Hector had 1-minute sustained winds of 45 mph (72 km/h). After entering the western Pacific, Hector tracked westward under the influence of a subtropical high. The tropical storm's structure consisted of weak banding features and a low-level center partially covered by convection on August 14. At the same time, Hector was located within an environment of dry air, low-to-moderate wind shear, and neutral 81 °F (27 °C) sea surface temperatures. Around 06:00 UTC, the JTWC downgraded Hector to a tropical depression. Convection continually decreased in organization throughout the day. Hector restrengthened into a tropical storm around 18:00 UTC on August 14 with winds of 45 mph (72 km/h). Meanwhile, the storm turned towards the west-northwest as it rounded the southern edge of the subtropical high. At 00:00 UTC on August 15, the JMA downgraded Hector to a tropical depression. At the same time, the JTWC indicated that Hector had transitioned into a subtropical storm with no change in intensity. The JTWC downgraded Hector to a subtropical depression around 12:00 UTC on August 15. The JTWC continued tracking Hector until 06:00 UTC on August 16, while the JMA monitored the cyclone until 18:00 UTC of that day. ## See also - Weather of 2018 - Tropical cyclones in 2018 - List of Category 4 Pacific hurricanes - Other tropical cyclones with the same name - List of Hawaii hurricanes - Hurricane Dora (1999) – another Category 4 hurricane that traversed all three North Pacific basins - Hurricane Ioke (2006) – a storm that set similar longevity records - Hurricane Lane (2018) – a Category 5 hurricane that became Hawaii's wettest tropical cyclone on record

Nativity (Christus)

Oil on wood panel painting by Petrus Christus

The Nativity is a devotional mid-1450s oil-on-wood panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. It shows a nativity scene with grisaille archways and trompe-l'œil sculptured reliefs. Christus was influenced by the first generation of Netherlandish artists, especially Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, and the panel is characteristic of the simplicity and naturalism of art of that period. Placing archways as a framing device is a typical van der Weyden device, and here likely borrowed from that artist's Saint John Altarpiece and Miraflores Altarpiece. Yet Christus adapts these painterly motifs to a uniquely mid-15th century sensibility, and the unusually large panel – perhaps painted as a central altarpiece panel for a triptych – is nuanced and visually complex. It shows his usual harmonious composition and employment of one-point-perspective, especially evident in the geometric forms of the shed's roof, and his bold use of color. It is one of Christus's most important works. Max Friedländer definitely attributed the panel to Christus in 1930, concluding that "in scope and importance, [it] is superior to all other known creations of this master." The overall atmosphere is one of simplicity, serenity and understated sophistication. It is reflective of the 14th-century Devotio Moderna movement, and contains complex Christian symbolism, subtly juxtaposing Old and New Testament iconography. The sculpted figures in the archway depict biblical scenes of sin and punishment, signaling the advent of Christ's sacrifice, with an over-reaching message of the "Fall and Redemption of humankind". Inside the archway, surrounded by four angels, is the Holy Family; beyond, a landscape extends into the far background. Art historians have suggested completion dates ranging from the early 1440s to the early 1460s, with c. 1455 seen as probable. The panel was acquired by Andrew Mellon in the 1930s, and was one of several hundreds from his personal collection donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. It has suffered damage and was restored in the early 1990s for an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ## Description The Nativity is unusually large for a 15th-century Early Netherlandish single-panel painting at 127.6 cm × 94.9 cm (50.2 in × 37.4 in), and covering four oak boards. No evidence of missing wing panels exists, yet its size suggests it may have been a central panel of a large triptych. Art historian Joel Upton writes that with its size, style, tone and composition, Christus painted "an Andachtsbild, with monumental, ciboriumlike dimensions". The distinction between the figures and the space around them is characteristic of Christus's work, as is its one-point perspective. The background landscape is serene as are the "charming, almost doll-like figures who make up the cast of characters." The setting is a shed enclosed in the front by what appear to be two stone pillars and an archway, rendered in grisaille. A tiny figure (atlante) hunches at the base of each pillar holding it up. On each pillar stand statues of Adam and Eve – Adam on the left and Eve to the right. At the bottom a marble threshold connects the arch. The top corners of the arch have two spandrels. The Fall of Man is shown in six scenes from the Book of Genesis within the archivolt, rendered in relief. Two are of Adam and Eve; their expulsion from paradise and Adam tilling the soil. The others are of Cain and Abel: their sacrifice to God; Cain slaying Abel; God appearing to Abel; Cain expelled to the Land of Nod. In the shed Mary and Joseph share an intensely private moment before the Annunciation to the shepherds of the Christ child's birth to the shepherds. They are rendered in bright colors. Mary wears a long flowing blue robe, Joseph a green-lined red cape over a brown robe. He holds his hat in hand, and his pattens are respectfully removed, left lying on the ground. They gaze reverently at the newborn figure of Jesus who lies on Mary's robe. Mary's features have a softness and sweetness more characteristic of Christus's later paintings and remarkably similar to his Madonna of the Dry Tree, according to Maryan Ainsworth. Kneeling in adoration to either side are four small angels. Animals are visible in stalls. Behind them is a crumbling wall with three low Romanesque windows. Four shepherds in contemporary 15th-century clothing are chatting amiably, leaning against the wall, looking into the shed. Two are positioned to the left and two to the right; in each pair one is dressed in red and another in blue. Behind the shed is a small hill where two shepherds herd sheep along a pathway, and beyond is a Netherlandish town with two domed structures in its center, symbolizing Jerusalem and Christ's Passion. The large domed building is based on the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, a replica of which the Adornes family built in Bruges in 1427, called the Jerusalem chapel. A flock of geese is visible high in the sky through the roof's trusses. Light shines into the shed from outside through the low windows. The shadows cast suggest the dawn of a new day. The four onlookers in the rear are in light and shadow, especially noticeable on the face of the man second from the right. Here Christus borrows an optical device from the work of his predecessors Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, but is bolder and more accomplished with his use of light, which art professor Lola Gellman describes as having "no counterpoint in previous art." ## Iconography The panel is rich in Christian iconography, which reflects the shift in religious attitudes to a more meditative and solitary devotion in the 14th century, exemplified by the Devotio Moderna movement. The painting is devotional; its iconography clearly juxtaposes Old and New Testament imagery, conveying themes of punishment and redemption, against the belief that a second chance is available through the birth of Christ. Depictions of the Nativity changed significantly in European art following St Bridget's visions of the event. According to Upton, the scene "became a source of emotional reward for one's faith, a private vision in response to one's contemplation." In Bridget's version of the event, Mary does not lie in a bed while giving birth. The event occurs in a cave, where, dressed in white, Mary kneels or stands in devotion before the infant lying on the ground. Joseph holds a candle to illuminate the birth. Robert Campin's c. 1420 Nativity is representative of Bridget's narrative; the cave has been substituted by a shed with animals, Mary's handmaidens are present, while angels and shepherds rejoice. Christus simplified the narrative: removing the handmaidens and relegating the animals to the background. Mary's white dress is replaced with a deep-blue robe. His Nativity is somber and subdued, an embodiment of the "austere calm of timeless worship." The Nativity conveys both the Old Testament themes of sin and punishment and the New Testament doctrine of sacrifice and redemption. Although Adam and Eve to either side of the arch are suggestive of those in van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece, they differ significantly. Here they are painted as grisaille statues in contrast to van Eyck's lifelike versions; and, unlike van Eyck's, here Adam and Eve stand in shame hiding their nudity. Earthly sin and strife, anger and revenge, are represented in the warriors in the corner spandrels, and signify that which Christ's birth would bring to an end. Themes of punishment and redemption are further explored in the six scenes on the arch, where the reliefs show the events from Genesis 4:1–16 (from left to right): The angel of God expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden; post-Expulsion life "when Adam delved and Eve spun"; the sacrifices of Cain and Abel; Cain killing Abel; (top) God banishing Cain; Cain saying farewell to his parents, or possibly his brother Seth leaving to find the Tree of Life, a Jewish legend from The Apocalypse of Moses, a pseudepigraphical work from antiquity. The two uppermost reliefs on the arch, which have a central focus and function as keystones, bring attention to the juxtaposition of Old and New Testament themes. The relief to the left shows Cain and Abel sacrificing to God; on the right Cain commits the sin of murder, which God punishes. The two reliefs also function as a temporal device, leading the viewer directly to the moment of Christ's birth and mankind's redemption, which occurs below in the shed. The viewer is reminded that mankind must sacrifice to Christ, who lies directly below, or risk punishment and expulsion from the church, just as God expelled Cain. The Fall of man acted out on the archway reminds the viewer of the "necessity of Christ's sacrifice". The semicircle of rock inside the doorsill remind the viewer to abandon sin. The viewer is reminded to reach a full understanding of the significance of the event, achieved with the two groupings of shepherds at the rear of the shed. Two of the four are active and two are passive. The man dressed in blue on the left is listening; the man in blue to the right is seeing, while their counterparts in red do neither. Although actively looking and listening, the two men in blue do not appear to have a full understanding of the event. Upton explains the medieval viewer would have understood that in the iconography Christus presented "man who would listen without hearing, and look without seeing." The viewer is reminded to comprehend the painting's vision and iconography, to fully recognize the significance of Christ's coming, to hear and see the word of God, and to obey God's wishes. The tuft of grass sprouting from the roof's central truss above the figures conveys a number of meanings. Although the shrub is naturally rendered, Christus almost certainly placed it there for its symbolic value; its positioning suggests he followed a program of disguised iconography. The most obvious meaning is of new life and new beginnings. On a secular level, the shrub may have indicated Christus's membership in the Confraternity of the Dry Tree, which he joined sometime around 1462–63. The confraternity was prestigious, including among its ranks Burgundian nobility, such as Philip the Good and his wife Isabella, wealthy foreign merchants and members from Bruges's upper classes. The tuft of grass also symbolizes the tree of life, and Upton theorizes that by placing it there, Christus "has given expression to the legend" of Adam's third son, Seth, whose quest for a branch was a popular legend in the medieval period. Furthermore, alludes to Moses and the burning bush. According to Upton, in Christus's Nativity Joseph assumes Moses's role of protector and law-bringer; just as Joseph has removed his pattens in the presence of Christ, Moses removed his shoes in the presence of the bush. The setting represents the Mass – the angels are clothed in Eucharistic vestments, with those on the far right dressed in a deacon's cope. None wear the celebrant's chasuble, suggesting Christ is the priest. The shed roof is a ciborium over an altar. A later addition to the painting, added perhaps in the 17th century, and since removed, was a gold paten on which the infant lay, clearly showing Jesus as the Eucharistic host. Mary, Joseph and the angels are the first to worship the infant Christ and the shed "becomes the altar of the first mass". Upton explains that when viewed in the context of the first mass the iconography is more clearly defined. ## Composition Christus was the first Netherlandish painter to achieve proficiency in strict mathematical compositional rules with his use of orthogonals, creating a unified perspective. The concept of compositions "based on unitary perspective" was largely a pioneering effort on Christus's part, although he borrowed from the earlier masters. Compositionally, the Nativity is one of Christus's most complex and important works, which Ainsworth says is masterfully integrated with the use of color. X-radiography reveals sketched orthogonal lines on the underpainting, used to indicate where the horizontal and vertical axis should meet at the main figures' heads, and that he used a compass to sketch the spandrels. The painting contains several geometric constructions. The roof of the shed's trusses form series of triangles connecting lines joining the base of the pedestals and the crossbeams. These surround the gathering of the Holy Family, who form an inverse pattern. According to art historian Lawrence Steefel, "the detail participates in an almost emblematic pattern of repeated triangles which establish a rhyme scheme above and below, of roof structure and figure disposition." Upton writes that a "clearly defined diamond" is visible within the apex in the roof. From there it extends down to Eve, and the bottom apex is formed where the infant lies on the ground. It then extends up to Adam and back up to the roof. "This diamond shape," he writes, "supplemented by the rectangle within it, formed by the shed supports, the base of the triangle and the ground line in the shed, circumscribes the main event of the painting." Spatial and temporal borders separating the earthly and heavenly spheres are often seen in Netherlandish art, usually in the form of frames or arches. A boundary is achieved here with the grisaille archway, strongly reminiscent of van der Weyden's work. Art historians speculate Christus may have imitated his c. 1455 Saint John Altarpiece. Instead of merely imitating, Christus innovated and extended the use of van der Weyden's arch motif; his arch is meant to be an opening, or a screen, for the viewer to see into the holy space, instead of a simple framing device in which figures are placed directly in-line or under the arch. The multi-hued threshold stones at the bottom emphasize its function says Upton, who writes: "it is an opening through which one passes: a true frame or doorway to the picture ... Yet, since this arch is painted in grisaille, distinct from the rest of the panel, it must also be seen as a separate entity, much like an elaborate border around an illuminated manuscript page." The shadows cast by the grisaille figures stress "its function as a diaphragm between real and illusory space". A very similar archway is found in Dieric Bouts's c. 1445 Mary Altarpiece, including spandrels with warriors. Art historians are unsure which was painted earlier – Christus's Nativity or Bouts's altarpiece. Equally, van der Weyden's arched triptychs were executed at roughly the same period, but art historians are more certain Rogier's archivolt design set the precedent. Unlike Bouts and van der Weyden, Christus appears to have used the device to encompass a single scene, incorporating all the main characters within the arch, instead of a linked series of scenes with separate archways. The arch is only a prelude to the complex divisions beyond. The space inhabited by the Holy Family is holy ground. Mary, Joseph, the Christ child and the four surrounding angels occupy a space partitioned in the front by the archway and by the wall at the rear. A semicircle of figures is positioned around Christ, echoed in the semicircle of rocks placed directly inside the doorsill. Mary and Joseph are echoed by the colorful vertical porphyry columns on the sides, and by the statues of Adam and Eve. The rear of the shed where the four men stand, the small valley with the shepherds, the town, and the background landscape are also spatially discrete areas, which create a "steady, measured movement into space in place of the more abrupt jumping from foreground to distant background common to Flemish painting." They also function to surround the Holy Family while simultaneously preventing its isolation from the world. Ainsworth writes that the "message of the painting quietly emerges from the strict, perspectively correct space constructed to engage the viewer." Upton agrees, explaining that the use of geometric devices emphasize the focal point, which "falls well below the horizon in the exact center of the panel", a perspective that would have given the 15th center viewer, kneeling in front of the panel, a "sense of physical relationship between the actual and ideal act of worship." ## Dating and condition The Nativity'''s dating has long been a source of debate among scholars. Estimations range from the mid-1440s to the mid-1450s; early in Christus's career to about the time van der Weyden painted his c. 1455 Saint John Altarpiece. Generally the mid-1450s seems the most accepted. Ainsworth considers it, along with Christus's Holy Family (currently in Kansas City), one of the most important attributed to him and believes it belongs in his later oeuvre, possibly as late as the mid-1460s. Evidence such as when Christus joined the Confraternity of the Dry Tree (c. early 1460s) points to it as a later work along with the Portrait of a Young Girl. Its use of perspective and assimilation of van Eyck's and van der Weyden's earlier influences also suggest a later date. Furthermore, the softer facial types utilized in the Nativity are typical of Christus's later work, and suggest a date around the mid-1450s. Technical analysis (dendrochronological evidence) suggests a date of c. 1458, based on the tree felling date. Christus painted two other versions of the Nativity: one in Bruges and the other in Berlin. The Bruges Nativity is dated 1452 – whether the date was added by Christus or during a restoration is unknown – and technical analysis of the brushstrokes suggests it to be earlier than the Washington Nativity. Determining the execution date relies on stylistic analysis, and the degree of van der Weyden's influence. The dating of the work to the 1440s is based on the notion that Christus borrowed heavily from the immediate influence of van der Weyden and Bouts. Although some of the similarities are undeniably striking and might be attributed to following a template, the degree of sophistication in the Nativity far surpasses the other two painters, according to Ainsworth. She writes that Bouts and van der Weyden "merely expand the narrative" in their use of the archway motif, whereas Christus shows a strong cause and effect between sin and redemption, innovations which almost certainly evolved later in his career, placing the date no earlier than the mid-1450s. The underdrawing is visible through modern technical analysis, revealing the main group of figures and contour lines in the folds and drape of the clothing. The angels' wings to Mary's left are visible, but not those to the right, probably because of later overpainting. In the underdrawing Mary's gown extends far to the left of the angel, but Christus apparently changed his mind about its execution. The work has suffered damage: cracking where three wood panels are joined, paint loss to parts of the crackle pattern, and discoloration of varnishes. The largest area of paint loss occurred on Joseph's shoulder. Mary's robe has been completely restored and overpainted. Some paint loss is barely discernible in the areas around her hair. In many areas the paint layers and underlying support are in good condition. The Nativity was one of 13 works hung at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's 1994 exhibition, "Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges". It underwent significant restoration in preparation. Technicians removed over-paint probably dating to its Spanish provenance. The addition included the gold paten on Mary's robe, pigment under the Christ child, and the halos above Mary and Jesus. As early as 1916, Friedländer questioned the presence of halos in Christus's work, rarely seen in mid-15th century Netherlandish painting. When the halos were carefully examined they were found to be later additions; before the exhibition they were removed from several paintings, including the Portrait of a Carthusian. ## Provenance The painting is today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which was conceived by Pittsburgh financier Andrew Mellon in the late 1930s. It was one of 126 paintings from his personal collection donated to the gallery and was on display at the museum opening in March 1941 – three years after his death. It belonged to Señora O. Yturbe of Madrid, who sold it in 1930 to Franz M. Zatzenstein, founder of the Matthiesen Gallery in Berlin. That April, the Duveen Brothers, less affected by the 1929 stock market crash than other dealers, paid Zatzenstein £30,000, in cash, for the painting and sold it immediately to Mellon. A dealer usually had to go through the lengthy process of sending photographs of a painting via trans-Atlantic ship to an American buyer and then wait for a reply; the transaction for the Nativity'' is exceptional because it is the first painting of which the photograph was wired via Marconi cable from England to America. To avoid the export fees due if the painting been sent directly to New York, the Duveens took a circuitous route – from Madrid to Germany, then to Paris and America. In 1936 it was acquired by the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, and gifted to the National Gallery a year later. Given its size and orientation, the panel was probably meant to stand alone, but may have been conceived as the wing of triptych altarpiece. Who commissioned the piece or how it came to be in the possession of a Spanish owner is unknown. At least half of Christus's known patrons were Italian or Spanish, and he often changed his style to suit their desire. Around eight of his paintings – only about 25 are extant – have come from either Italy or Spain, giving credence to speculation that he spent time there. Yet the existence of the thriving export market in early Netherlandish panel painting suggests equally that it could have been painted in Bruges and transported south.

1983–84 Gillingham F.C. season

During the 1983–84 English football season, Gillingham F.C. competed in the Football League Third Division, the third tier of the English football league system. It was the 52nd season in which Gillingham competed in the Football League and the 34th since the club was voted back into the league in 1950. The team started the season poorly and were near the bottom of the league table after six games, but won five times in October to move into the top half, where they remained at the end of 1983. After only playing one league match in January, Gillingham were 10th in the 24-team table at the end of February but were in the advantageous position of having up to four games more to play than the teams above them. During March and April, however, they played 15 games and only won three times to fall out of contention for promotion to the Second Division. After winning three out of four games in May, the team finished the season 8th in the table, missing out on promotion by five places. Gillingham also competed in three knock-out competitions. They lost in the first round of both the Football League Cup and the Associate Members' Cup but reached the fourth round of the FA Cup, at which stage they held Everton of the First Division, the highest level of English football, to two goalless draws before losing a second replay. The team played 55 competitive matches, winning 23, drawing 12, and losing 20. Dave Mehmet was the club's leading goalscorer, with 17 goals in all competitions. John Leslie made the most appearances, missing only one game. The highest attendance recorded at the club's home ground, Priestfield Stadium, was 17,817 for the second of the two replays against Everton. ## Background and pre-season The 1983–84 season was Gillingham's 52nd season playing in the Football League and the 34th since the club was elected back into the League in 1950 after being voted out in 1938. It was the club's 10th consecutive season in the Football League Third Division, the third tier of the English football league system, since the team gained promotion from the Fourth Division in 1974. In the nine seasons since then, the team had achieved a best finish of fourth place, one position away from promotion to the Second Division, in the 1978–79 season. The club had never reached the second level of English football in its history. Keith Peacock was the club's manager for a third season, having been appointed in July 1981. Paul Taylor served as assistant manager and Bill Collins, who had been with the club in a variety of roles since the early 1960s, held the posts of first-team trainer and manager of the youth team. Before the new season, Gillingham signed two new players: John Leslie, a forward, arrived from Wimbledon, and David Fry, a goalkeeper, joined the club from Crystal Palace, both on free transfers. Peacock also attempted to sign another forward, Mike Barrett, but although his club, Bristol Rovers, accepted Gillingham's proposed transfer fee, the player chose to reject the move. Players leaving Gillingham included Micky Adams, who was transferred to Coventry City of the First Division for a fee of £85,000, a new record for the highest transfer fee received by the club. The team's kit for the season consisted of Gillingham's usual blue shirts, white shorts and white socks. The away kit, to be worn in the event of a clash of colours with the home team, comprised red shirts, black shorts and black socks. The players prepared for the new season with several friendlies, mostly against other Football League teams but including a match against the national team of Japan, a game attended by the Japanese ambassador as well as by Sir Stanley Rous, a former president of FIFA, the sport's global governing body. ## Third Division ### August–December Gillingham's first match of the season was away to Sheffield United on 27 August; Leslie made his Gillingham debut, as did Andy Woodhead, a 17-year old defender from the club's youth team. Keith Edwards gave the home team the lead in the first half and then scored three more times in the second half to complete a 4–0 victory. The first league game of the season at Gillingham's ground, Priestfield Stadium, took place a week later against Hull City. Ray Daniel, a teenaged midfielder signed on loan from Luton Town, made his debut. Gillingham conceded a goal in the first half and, although Leslie equalised with his first goal for the club shortly after the interval, ultimately lost 2–1. Another loan player, Paul Garner, made his first appearance against Bolton Wanderers on 6 September in defence; Forward Tony Cascarino, the team's leading goalscorer in the previous season, made his first appearance of the campaign as a substitute for Garner. Goals from Dave Mehmet and Mark Weatherly gave Gillingham their first win of the season. Gillingham drew 1–1 with Plymouth Argyle on 10 September but then lost to both Oxford United and AFC Bournemouth. Fry made his debut against Bournemouth, replacing Ron Hillyard, who had been the team's first-choice goalkeeper since 1974. Steve Bruce, a defender who was only 22 years old but had already played nearly 200 games for Gillingham, returned to the team for the same game after missing the start of the season due to a broken leg. At the end of September, Gillingham were 22nd out of 24 teams in the Third Division league table. Having lost their last two league games of September, Gillingham won their first five matches of October. They began the run by defeating Brentford 4–2 at Priestfield on 1 October with two goals from each of Leslie and Mehmet. A week later, Terry Cochrane, a winger newly signed on loan from Middlesbrough, made his debut and scored the first goal in a 2–0 victory at home to Preston North End. His move to Gillingham would be made permanent later in the month. Cochrane scored again in the next game away to Burnley; after taking a 2–0 lead, Gillingham conceded two goals, but Mehmet scored in the final five minutes to secure a 3–2 victory. Against Exeter City on 18 October, Gillingham scored twice in the first eight minutes and went on to win 3–1. A 2–1 victory away to Wigan Athletic four days later, in which Cochrane scored his third goal in his first four games for the team, meant that for the third consecutive season Gillingham had followed a slow start to the season by winning at least four league games in October. Draws away to Orient and at home to Millwall meant that at the end of the month Gillingham were 10th in the table. Gillingham won 2–0 at home to Lincoln City on 5 November with goals from Jeff Johnson and Mehmet. A week later, their unbeaten run ended at eight games as they lost 3–1 away to Walsall; while travelling to the game, Clifford Grossmark, who had served as chairman of the club's board of directors for more than 20 years, suffered a heart attack and died, a fact which was not revealed to the players until after the match. In the next game, against Rotherham United, Gillingham took a 2–0 lead through goals from Weatherly and Mehmet but were reduced to ten men shortly before the end of the first half when Johnson was sent off. Although Rotherham scored twice after the interval, both Weatherly and Mehmet scored again and Gillingham won 4–2. Russell Musker, a midfielder signed from Bristol City, made his debut in the game. Gillingham began December with a 1–0 win away to Port Vale, Cochrane scoring the only goal of the game less than a minute from the start. Hillyard played his first game since September in a 2–0 defeat away to Scunthorpe United on 17 December. On Boxing Day, Gillingham achieved their biggest win of the season with a 5–1 victory at home to Southend United. It was the first time the team had scored more than four goals in a game since February 1982 and left them 9th in the league table. Gillingham ended 1983 with two defeats, losing 3–0 away to Bristol Rovers and 1–0 at home to Wimbledon on 31 December, the first time they had lost at Priestfield since mid-September. John Sharpe, a defender who had been a regular in the team since 1978, was injured against Bristol Rovers and would not play again for nearly a year. Cascarino, who had been out injured, returned to the side against Wimbledon. The result left Gillingham 11th in the table at the end of the calendar year. ### January–May Four of Gillingham's five league games originally scheduled for January were postponed, two of them because of the team's continuing involvement in the FA Cup, with the result that the team played only one Third Division match in the month, at home to Sheffield United. Bruce scored twice and Weatherly and Cochrane added a goal each as Gillingham took a 4–0 lead, but their team-mates John Sitton and Peter Shaw then both scored own goals; the game finished 4–2 to Gillingham. At the end of the month, Gillingham were 12th in the league table but had the advantage that they had between two and five more games still to play than every team above them. They secured a 3–2 win away to Brentford on 4 February and, despite conceding a goal inside the first minute, continued their unbeaten run a week later by beating AFC Bournemouth 2–1. The team's next two matches both ended in draws, 0–0 at home to Bradford City and 2–2 at home to Millwall, and they remained unbeaten in the Third Division in 1984 when two goals from Mehmet and one from Cascarino gave them a 3–0 victory at home to Wigan Athletic on 25 February. At the end of the month, Gillingham were 10th in the table, seven points below the top three places which would result in promotion, but still with the advantage of having played up to four fewer games than all the teams above them. Gillingham began March with a match against Exeter City, who were 24th in the league table, but were held to a 0–0 draw, and their undefeated league run then came to an end as they were beaten 4–0 by Lincoln City. Gillingham fell further out of contention for the promotion places after losing 3–1 to Walsall on 10 March, a result which left them 13 points below third place. Four days later, Gillingham played away to Oxford United, who were top of the table. Phil Cavener, making his first appearance in the starting line-up, scored a goal inside the first minute and Gillingham won 1–0. It was the first time during the season that Oxford had failed to score in a home league game. Against Preston North End on 17 March, Gillingham scored two goals in the first half through Musker and Brian Sparrow, a defender making the final appearance of a loan spell from Arsenal, but conceded twice in the second half. The team's next two games both ended in 1–0 defeats, at home to Burnley and away to Newport County, meaning that they had won only once in the last seven games. Colin Clarke, a forward signed on loan from Peterborough United, made his debut against Burnley. In the last game of March, goals from Leslie and Mehmet, neither of whom had scored for over a month, and Cascarino secured a 3–1 win over Orient; despite the victory, Gillingham were again 13 points below third place. A goal from Cascarino gave Gillingham a second consecutive win as they beat Bolton Wanderers 1–0 on 7 April, but it would prove to be the only victory they achieved in eight matches during the month. Four days later they lost 3–2 away to Bradford City after having been 2–1 up at half-time; Clarke scored the only goal of his eight-game loan spell. Weatherly, who had not played since sustaining a knee ligament injury in January, made his return as a substitute. Leslie scored a late equaliser to secure a draw against Port Vale on 14 April, and the next game against Hull City also ended in a draw. Gillingham's winless run continued on 20 April as they played 23rd-placed Southend United and lost 3–1. Against Bristol Rovers on 23 April, Musker scored an equaliser inside the final ten minutes after Gillingham had conceded a goal, but Bristol Rovers then scored again to win the game. Gillingham fell to a third consecutive defeat against Rotherham United and finished the game with ten men after Cochrane was sent off. Having gone six games without a victory, Gillingham won their first three games of May, beginning with a 2–1 defeat of Plymouth Argyle. In the next game, at home to Newport County on 5 May, Musker scored inside the first minute and Cascarino added two more goals before ten minutes of the match had elapsed; Gillingham went on to win 4–1. Two days later, Gillingham conceded a goal against second-placed Wimbledon just ten seconds after the start of the match, but came back to win 3–1. Gillingham's final game of the season was at home to Scunthorpe United on 12 May. Mehmet scored his 16th league goal of the season in a 1–1 draw which meant that Gillingham finished the season 8th in the league table, 13 points below the promotion places. ### League match results Key - In result column, Gillingham's score shown first - H = Home match - A = Away match - pen. = Penalty kick ### Partial league table ## FA Cup As a Third Division team, Gillingham entered the 1983–84 FA Cup at the first round stage; their opponents were AP Leamington of the Southern League, who had progressed through four qualifying rounds to reach this stage of the competition. A goal from Phil Handford gave Gillingham a 1–0 victory at Leamington's Windmill Gound and took them into the second round, where they faced another Southern League team, Chelmsford City, at Priestfield. Although Gillingham were held to a 1–0 lead at half-time, they scored five times after the interval and won 6–1. Gillingham's third round opponents were fellow Third Division team Brentford; with less than 15 minutes of the match at Priestfield remaining, Brentford were winning 3–1 and seemed set for victory, but Gillingham scored four goals in the final 11 minutes to secure a 5–3 win and reach the fourth round (last 32) of the competition for only the third time in the club's history. Gillingham's opponents in the fourth round were Everton of the First Division, the highest tier of English football. The match took place at Everton's ground, Goodison Park, and Gillingham held their higher-level opponents to a goalless draw, meaning that a replay at Priestfield was required. The second match was also goalless at the end of the regulation 90 minutes and went into extra time. Shortly before the end of the additional period, a long clearance out of the Gillingham defence reached Cascarino, who found himself in the clear with only Everton's goalkeeper Neville Southall to beat, but the Gillingham forward hit a weak shot which was blocked by Southall and the final score was again 0–0. In a review of Cascarino's autobiography, published sixteen years later, Dave Hill of the magazine When Saturday Comes described the moment as "one of the great misses [of all time]"; in the book Cascarino himself attributed it to a sudden attack of self-doubt at the crucial moment, writing "Panic was clouding my brain like a fog. [Southall] narrowed the angle and stood his ground. Impulsively I reached for the trigger and kicked an awful shot that almost dribbled into his hands". As Gillingham won a coin toss to decide the venue of the second replay, it also took place at Priestfield. The match resulted in a 3–0 victory for Everton, ending Gillingham's participation in the FA Cup for the season. The reporter for The Daily Telegraph wrote that Gillingham's decision after winning the coin toss for the choice of ends to play with a strong wind behind them in the first half backfired as it led to them relying too much on long-range shots which lacked accuracy. The gate receipts of for the second replay were a new club record. ### FA Cup match results Key - In result column, Gillingham's score shown first - H = Home match - A = Away match ## Football League Cup As a Third Division team, Gillingham entered the 1983–84 Football League Cup at the first round stage and were drawn to play Chelsea of the Second Division. The first leg of the two-legged tie took place at Priestfield on 30 August; Shaw scored for Gillingham in the first half and the score was 1–1 at half time, but Chelsea scored a second goal after the interval. The second leg took place two weeks later at Stamford Bridge and resulted in a 4–0 victory for Chelsea, making the aggregate score 6–1 and eliminating Gillingham from the competition. Kerry Dixon scored all the goals in the second leg, making him the second player inside three weeks to score four times in a game against Gillingham. ### Football League Cup match results Key - In result column, Gillingham's score shown first - H = Home match - A = Away match ## Associate Members' Cup Gillingham entered the 1983–84 Associate Members' Cup, a new competition exclusively for Third and Fourth Division clubs, at the first round stage and were paired with fellow Third Division side Millwall; the match took place nine days after the teams had drawn 2–2 in the league. Both teams scored two goals in the first half and a third after half-time; with the scores level after 90 minutes the match went into extra time. With three minutes of the additional period remaining, 17-year old Teddy Sheringham scored to give Millwall a 4–3 win, meaning that Gillingham were eliminated from the tournament. ### Associate Members' Cup match results Key - In result column, Gillingham's score shown first - H = Home match - A = Away match ## Player details During the season, 28 players made at least one appearance for Gillingham. Leslie made the most, playing in 54 of the team's 55 competitive matches. Mehmet and Sitton also played 50 or more times, and another six players made 40 or more appearances. Seven players made fewer than five appearances, four of whom played only once. Mehmet was the team's top goalscorer, scoring 16 times in the league and once in the FA Cup. Cascarino scored 15 goals and Weatherly and Leslie also reached double figures. ## Aftermath For the second consecutive season, Bruce was voted into the Professional Footballers' Association Team of the Year for the Third Division by his fellow professionals. Having attracted the attention of several First Division clubs with his performances, the defender left Gillingham at the end of the season to join Norwich City for a fee of £135,000. Shaw won the club's own Player of the Season award. Writing in the matchday programme for the final game of the season, Peacock contended that injuries restricting the players available for selection had been the primary reason for the decline in the team's performances in the final months of the season and their inability to remain in contention for promotion. He added that the club was "close to developing a side with genuine promotion potential". The following season, Gillingham matched their best performance since returning to the Third Division, finishing fourth and missing out on promotion by one place. It would not be until 2000 that the club reached the second level of English football for the first time.

Ninja Gaiden (NES video game)

1988 video game

Ninja Gaiden, released in Japan as and as Shadow Warriors in Europe, is a 1988 action-platform game developed and published by Tecmo for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Its development and release coincided with the beat 'em up arcade version of the same name. It was released in December 1988 in Japan, in March 1989 in North America, and in August 1991 in Europe. It has been ported to several other platforms, including the PC Engine, the Super NES, and mobile phones. Set in a retro-futuristic version of 1988, the story follows a ninja named Ryu Hayabusa as he journeys to America to avenge his murdered father. There, he learns that a person named "the Jaquio" plans to take control of the world by unleashing an ancient demon through the power contained in two statues. Featuring side-scrolling platform gameplay similar to Castlevania, players control Ryu through six "Acts" that comprise 20 levels; they encounter enemies that must be dispatched with Ryu's katana and other secondary weapons. Ninja Gaiden has an elaborate story told through anime-like cinematic cutscenes. It received extensive coverage and won several awards from video gaming magazines, while criticism focused on its high difficulty, particularly in the later levels. Director Hideo Yoshizawa named Ninja Gaiden as his most commercially successful project. The game continued to receive acclaim from print and online publications, being cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. It was novelized as part of the Worlds of Power game adaptations written by Seth Godin and Peter Lerangis. The game was followed by Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (1990) and Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (1991). A manga-styled comic book, Ninja Gaiden '88, published by Dark Horse Comics, continued the narrative of the five original games. ## Plot Ninja Gaiden features a ninja named Ryu Hayabusa who seeks revenge for the death of his father and gradually finds himself involved in a sinister plot that threatens the entire world. The story opens with Ryu's father Ken seemingly killed in a duel by an unknown assailant. After the duel, Ryu finds a letter written by Ken which tells him to find an archeologist named Walter Smith in America. Before Ryu can find Walter, he is shot and kidnapped by a mysterious young woman; she hands him a demonic-looking statue before releasing him. Ryu then finds Walter who tells him of the demon statues he and Ken had found in the Amazon ruins. Walter tells Ryu of an evil demon named Jashin, that "SHINOBI" defeated, whose power was confined into "Light" and "Shadow" demon statues. Ryu shows Walter the "Shadow" demon statue given to him by the woman, but during their conversation, a masked figure, named Basaquer, suddenly breaks into the cabin and steals the Shadow statue. Ryu gives chase, defeats the masked figure, and retrieves the statue; but when he returns he finds that Walter is dying, and the Light statue is missing. Right after Walter dies, three armed men confront Ryu and tell him to come with them. Ryu is taken to an interrogation room, where he meets Foster, head of the Special Auxiliary Unit of the Central Intelligence Agency. Foster tells him about a more-than-2000-year-old temple Walter discovered in the Amazon. He explains that Walter mysteriously sealed the ruins, and nobody has since ventured near them. Foster mentions they have been monitoring the activity of someone named Guardia de Mieux, also known as "the Jaquio", who recently moved into the temple where the body of the demon was confined. Using the statues, the Jaquio plans to awaken Jashin and use it to destroy the world. Foster asks Ryu to go to the temple and eliminate him. At the temple, Ryu discovers the Jaquio has captured the girl who handed him the "Shadow" statue earlier. He orders Ryu to give up the demon statue after threatening the girl's life, then drops Ryu through a trapdoor and into a catacomb. After fighting his way back to the top of the temple, Ryu encounters Bloody Malth, whom he defeats. As he is dying, Malth reveals that he was the one who dueled with Ryu's father, that his father is still alive, and Ryu will meet him as he presses onward. When he reaches the temple's inner chambers, he discovers his father was possessed by an evil figure. He destroys the evil figure and releases Ken from its hold. An enraged Jaquio shows himself and tries to kill Ryu with a fiery projectile, but Ken throws himself in front of Ryu and takes the hit. Ryu subsequently kills Jaquio, but then a lunar eclipse causes the demon statues to transform into Jashin. After Ryu defeats the demon, a dying Ken tells Ryu to leave him behind in the temple while it collapses, and to take the young woman with him. Afterwards, Foster, communicating via satellite, orders the girl to kill Ryu and steal the demon statues; she chooses to be with Ryu instead of carrying out the order. The two kiss, and the girl tells Ryu her name, Irene Lew; they watch as the sun rises. ## Gameplay Ninja Gaiden is a side-scrolling platform game in which the player takes control of the player-character, Ryu Hayabusa, and guides him through six "Acts" that comprise 20 levels. A life meter represents Ryu's physical strength, which decreases when he is hit by an enemy or projectile. A "life" is lost when the life meter is depleted entirely, when Ryu falls off the screen, or when the timer runs out. A game over screen appears when all lives are lost; however, the player may restart the level where this occurred by continuing. At the end of every Act, the player fights a boss; bosses have life meters depleted by player attacks. When its life meter is depleted entirely, a boss is defeated. Each boss is one of the "Malice Four"—evil underlings of the Jaquio, the game's main antagonist. The Malice Four consist of Barbarian, Bomberhead, Basaquer, and their leader Bloody Malth. Players attack enemies by thrusting at them with Ryu's Dragon Sword—a katana-like sword passed down by the Hayabusa clan for generations. They can also use secondary weapons that consume Ryu's "spiritual strength". These include throwing stars, "windmill throwing stars", which cut through enemies and return like boomerangs, a series of twirling fireballs named "the art of the fire wheel", and a mid-air slashing technique called the "jump & slash". When Ryu's spiritual strength meter is too low, the player cannot use secondary weapons. Players can replenish Ryu's spiritual strength by collecting red and blue "spiritual strength" items found in lamps and lanterns. Other items found along the way include hourglasses that freeze all enemies and projectiles for five seconds, bonus point containers, potions that restore six units of physical strength, "invincible fire wheels" that make Ryu temporarily invincible to attacks and 1-ups. Ryu can jump on and off ladders and walls, and by using the directional pad, he can climb up or down ladders. Ryu can spring off walls by holding the directional pad in the opposite direction he is facing and pressing the jump button. He cannot attack while on walls or ladders. Players can use this technique to get Ryu to climb up spaces between walls and columns by holding down the jump button and alternating between left and right on the directional pad. He can also climb a single wall vertically by springing off it and then quickly pressing the directional pad back towards the wall. ## Development Tecmo first announced the Famicom version of the game in the January 15, 1988, issue of Family Computer Magazine under the title Ninja Gaiden (which would later be used for the game's American version). The game was released in Japan on December 9, 1988, under its final title Ninja Ryūkenden, which roughly translates to Legend of the Dragon Sword. It was developed and released around the same time as the beat 'em up arcade version of the same name; neither of the games were ports of each other but were parallel projects developed by different teams. According to developer Masato Kato (listed as "Runmaru" in the game's credits), the term "ninja" was gaining popularity in North America, prompting Tecmo to develop a ninja-related game for the NES at the same time the arcade version of Ninja Gaiden was being developed. Hideo Yoshizawa (listed as "Sakurazaki") developed and directed the NES version. Ninja Gaiden was Masato Kato's first full-time project as a video game designer, and he contributed the game's graphics, animations and instruction manual illustrations. Drawing inspiration from the Mario series, Yoshizawa kept the same title but changed everything else; it became a platform game as opposed to a beat 'em up such as Double Dragon; the gameplay was modeled after Konami's Castlevania, with Ryu being equipped with a katana-like Dragon Sword, shurikens, and ninpo techniques such as fire wheels. In designing the protagonist Ryu Hayabusa, the development team wanted him to be unique from other ninjas. They designed him with a ninja vest to place emphasis on his muscles, and they furnished him with a cowl that arched outward. They originally wanted to equip Ryu with sensors and a helmet with an inside monitor to check his surroundings, but that idea was scrapped. According to Kato, they used specific locations and environments to justify the need for having a ninja for a main character. A further concern, according to Yoshizawa, was to appeal to the gameplay-oriented expectations of Ninja Gaiden's target audience, mainly represented by experienced players who appreciated challenging game design. He recalled that during development, Tecmo adhered to "the philosophy that the user would throw a game away if it wasn't hard enough". As a result, Yoshizawa decided to give the game an overall high level of difficulty. Yoshizawa placed greater emphasis on the story, unlike the arcade version, and wrote and designed a plot that included over 20 minutes of cinematic cutscenes—the first time an NES game contained such sequences. Yoshizawa stated that the adoption of this presentational style came from his earlier aspiration for a career in commercial filmmaking, which led him to seek an opportunity "to put in a movie somehow". His idea was to reverse the then-prevailing trend wherein the narrative aspects of contemporary NES games were undervalued by consumers with the inclusion of an interesting plot that could engage those players. Tecmo called the cutscene system "Tecmo Theater" in which the game reveals the storyline between Acts through the use of animated sequences. They are used at the beginning of each Act to introduce new characters such as Irene Lew, Walter Smith, and the Jaquio. This feature uses techniques such as close-ups, alternate camera angles, differing background music, and sound effects to make the game more enjoyable for players. Unlike earlier titles such as Final Fantasy, the cutscenes consisted of large anime art on the top half of the screen with dialogue on the bottom half. This made the artistic style more reminiscent of manga titles such as Lupin III and Golgo 13. Dimitri Criona, Tecmo USA's director of sales and marketing, said that console games had an advantage over arcade games in that they allowed the creation of a longer game and the inclusion of cutscenes, which Tecmo trademarked as "cinema screens". He noted console games required a different reward structure than arcade games. The game contains a feature that was originally a glitch but was left in the final game intentionally, according to Masato Kato; having lost to any of the game's last three bosses, the player is sent back to the beginning of the sixth act. When the game's text was translated from Japanese to English, the game needed to be reprogrammed to accomplish this; different companies handled this process in different ways. Tecmo's Japanese writers wrote rough translations in English and then faxed them to the American division. According to Criona, the American division would "edit it and put it back together, telling the story in a context that an American English speaker would understand. This would go back and forth several times". Moreover, the game's text was stored in picture files instead of raw computer text. Because of the NES's hardware limitations, the English text needed to be very clear and concise to fall within those limitations; many times, different words with the same meaning but with fewer characters had to be used. All symbols and objects were scrutinized by Nintendo of America, who had specific rules on what could be included for North American releases; for instance, any Satanic, Christian, or any other religious, sexual, or drug-related references were not allowed. ## Marketing and release Since the game's title was deemed too difficult for English audiences to read, it was renamed when it was released in Western markets. In early 1988 advertisements from Nintendo Fun Club News, Tecmo used Ninja Dragon as a tentative title for the U.S. release. They decided to use the title Ninja Gaiden (its original working title) when the game was released in the U.S. in March 1989. The title literally means "Ninja Side-Story", but the game was not intended as a spin-off of any prior work. According to an interview with developer Masato Kato, when deciding how to translate "Ryukenden" into English, the staff chose Ninja Gaiden "because it sounded cool". In Europe, the game was scheduled to be released in September 1990, but was delayed until September 1991. It was retitled as Shadow Warriors—just as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was renamed Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles—as ninjas were considered a taboo subject in Europe. It was one of many ninja-related video games around the time, such as The Legend of Kage, Ninja Warriors, and Shinobi. Upon Ninja Gaiden's North American release, Nintendo of America, whose play-testers liked the game and gave it high ratings, decided to help with its marketing. Nintendo's house organ Nintendo Power featured it prominently. According to Criona, it did not take a lot of effort to market the game through the magazine, nor did Tecmo or Nintendo do much else to promote it. Ninja Gaiden received strong publicity in Nintendo Power in 1989 and 1990. Ninja Gaiden received preview coverage in the January–February 1989 issue of Nintendo Power in its "Pak Watch" section. It "got the highest marks of any title ... [the magazine's staff had] seen in a long time". It was expected to be No. 1 on their "Player's Poll" quickly. The preview compared Ryu's ability to climb and spring off walls to the gameplay in Metroid. It was featured on the cover of the magazine's March–April 1989 issue and was referenced in the following issue in a Howard and Nester comic strip. It was one of the featured games in both March–April and May–June 1989 issues of the magazine; both issues included a walkthrough up to the fifth Act, a review, and a plot overview. Underlining the game's difficulty, it appeared in several issues in the magazine's "Counselor's Corner" and "Classified Information" help sections. The game was unveiled at the 1989 International Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Its display featured a demo of the game and a live person dressed as a ninja. Tecmo predicted that the game would be the top-selling, third-party title for the NES. Demand for the game eventually exceeded its supply. While Tecmo anticipated the game would be a hit, according to Kohler they did not realize at the time the impact it would have on the video game industry "with its groundbreaking use of cinematics". Yoshizawa would go on to direct the sequel Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (1990) and remained as an executive producer for Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (1991), while Masato Kato took over directing the game design. ### Ports A PC Engine port of Ninja Ryūkenden was produced in 1992, published by Hudson Soft and released only in Japan. It features more colorful and detailed graphics, along with difficulty and gameplay tweaks and a different soundtrack. This version also supports three different language settings with Japanese, English and Chinese as the available options. However, the English translation used in this version differs from the one used in the earlier NES version. Ninja Gaiden appeared as a remake of the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy compilation for the Super NES in 1995. Some reviewers appreciated the redrawn graphics and music in this version, but others found them to be an inadequate effort. Electronic Gaming Monthly reviewers compared it unfavorably to another updated NES remake, Mega Man: The Wily Wars for the Sega Genesis; they called the version "an exact port-over with no noticeable enhancements in graphics, sound and play control". Along with the other two games in the Ninja Gaiden trilogy, the SNES version was featured as an unlockable game in Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox. The NES version was released on Wii's Virtual Console on April 10, 2007, in Japan and on May 14 in North America. Europeans, Australians, and New Zealanders were able to purchase the game as part of "Hanabi Festival" on September 21. The PC Engine version was released for Virtual Console in Japan on April 21, 2009. The NES version was also released for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console, with an original release date set for November 8, 2012, but was delayed until December 13. The NES version was released on Wii U's Virtual Console in 2014. The game was also re-released as part of the NES Classic Edition dedicated console in November 2016, and for the Nintendo Switch in December 2018 as part of the NES: Nintendo Switch Online service. ## Related media In July 1990 Scholastic Corporation published a novelization of Ninja Gaiden under the Worlds of Power series of NES game adaptations, created and packaged by Seth Godin under the pseudonym F. X. Nine. Godin and Peter Lerangis, under the pseudonym A. L. Singer, wrote the novelization. As with the other Worlds of Power books, the amount of violence present in the video game was toned down in the novelization, because Godin and Scholastic were concerned that some of the material in the video game was inappropriate for a young audience. The novel did not adhere strictly to the game's storyline; for instance, the ending was changed so that Ryu's father survived. Godin believed the revised ending was consistent with the Worlds of Power character. As real-life fathers Godin and Lerangis were reluctant to leave Ryu fatherless. On the book's cover, otherwise a copy of the North American box art, the kunai held in Ryu's front hand was airbrushed out, leaving him prodding the air with an empty fist. Pony Canyon released a soundtrack CD, Ninja Ryukenden: Tecmo GSM-1, in February 1989. The first half of the CD starts with an arranged medley of the game's music. It continues with enhanced versions of the game's music which used stereophonic sound and additional PCM channels. The rest of the CD features music from the arcade version. In 2017, Brave Wave Productions released a vinyl box set, Ninja Gaiden- the Definitive Soundtrack, mastered by original composer Keiji Yamagishi. ## Reception The game was a major commercial hit in the United States, where it sold a large number of copies. According to Tecmo USA's Dimitri Criona, high demand led to repeated orders for Ninja Gaiden in increments of 60,000 cartridges per order. ### Critical reception The game debuted at No. 3 on Nintendo Power's Top 30 list for July–August 1989, behind Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Super Mario Bros. 2; it stayed at No. 3 in the September–October 1989 issue. The Nintendo Power Awards '89 featured the game as one of the top games that year. It was nominated for Best Graphics and Sound, Best Challenge, Best Theme, Fun, Best Character (Ryu Hayabusa), Best Ending, and Best Overall; and it won for Best Challenge and Best Ending. In its preview of Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos, the magazine said that "the colorful, detailed and dynamic cinema scenes of the original Ninja Gaiden set a standard for action game narration that has since been widely emulated. These cinema scenes made Ninja Gaiden play almost like a movie." Reflecting on his career as a game designer, Yoshizawa considered Ninja Gaiden–along with Klonoa: Door to Phantomile–his proudest accomplishment, explaining that the title enjoyed the best sales performance out of all of his projects. Beyond press coverage by Nintendo Power, the game received strong reviews and publicity from other video gaming magazines upon its release. In a review from VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, the presentation and gameplay were compared to Castlevania, while the cinematic cutscenes were compared favorably to Karateka and other computer games by Cinemaware. The review praised the game's animation in these cutscenes and noted Tecmo's usage of close-ups and body movements. The reviewer said that while the cutscenes were not fluid, they were effective and entertaining and provided important information about what the player was supposed to do. He appreciated the game had unlimited continues which slightly offset its difficulty, but he criticized it for having over-detailed background graphics especially in the indoor levels, saying that some bottomless pits and items in these levels become slightly camouflaged. From July to October 1989, the game was listed at No. 1 on Electronic Gaming Monthly's Top Ten Video Games list; it fell to No. 2 on the list behind Mega Man 2 in the November issue. In their Best and Worst of 1989, it received awards for Best Game of the Year for the NES and Best Ending in a Video Game for all consoles. The staff said that Ninja Gaiden "proved to be an instant winner" with its cinematic cutscenes and unique gameplay. They added the game's climax was better than some movies' climaxes at the time and that it established continuity for a sequel, which would be released the following year. Later in June 1994, the magazine ranked it at No. 4 on a special list of Top Ten Most Difficult Games of all time for all consoles. The July 1990 pilot issue of UK magazine Mean Machines featured Ninja Gaiden on the cover; the magazine was distributed as part of the July 1990 issue of Computer and Video Games. In its review, Julian Rignall compared the game to its beat 'em up arcade counterpart, which was titled Shadow Warriors. He noted the game has great graphics that feature diverse backgrounds and character sprites; he especially praised its use of cartoon-like animation sequences between Acts where the game's plot unfolds. He enjoyed the game's difficulty especially with the bosses, but he noted the game will seem tough at first until players become accustomed to the controls. He criticized the game for its sound, which he said did not fit with the graphics and was "racy" but added "what's there is atmospheric and suits the action". He highly recommended the game to fans of the beat 'em up and combat genres. Mean Machines reviewed the game again (the NES version now officially titled Shadow Warriors in Europe) in its July 1991 issue. In the review, Matt Regan and Paul Glancey praised its detailed and animated character sprites and its difficulty level. The game's high standards of gameplay, sound, and overall depth impressed Regan; he noted the game's frustrating difficulty but pointed out that it has unlimited continues. Glancey compared the game to the 1990 NES version of Batman (released later in 1990) with its similar wall-jumping mechanics; he said that its graphics were not as well-developed as Batman's but were still satisfactory. He praised its detailed sprites and their animations along with the "Tecmo Theater" concept, noting that the cutscenes "help supply a lot of atmosphere". He said it is one of the best arcade-style games on the NES as well as the best ninja-related game on the system. The Japanese magazine Famitsu gave it a score of 28 out of 40. The game received some praise and criticism in the August 1991 issue of German magazine Power Play. The review praised the game for its attention to detail and challenge and noted players need to master certain gameplay skills to move on. Criticisms included a "lack of variety" and dullness in gameplay which was compared to a "visit to the tax office". The PC Engine version was briefly mentioned in the December 1991 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly as part of a review of games that had been released outside the U.S. They noted the faithful translation from the NES version as well as the revamped and more detailed graphics, saying "PC Engine owners should not miss this one\!" The perceived excessive difficulty frustrated Total\! reviewer Andy to the point of being a deal breaker. He additionally criticized the game's platform genre as unoriginal. ### Legacy Ninja Gaiden initiated the original Ninja Gaiden game series and was followed by Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (1990), and Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (1991). In 2004, Tecmo began releasing low-priced episodic installments of Ninja Gaiden for AT\&T and Verizon mobile phones on both BREW and Java platforms. The official English Tecmo Games' mobile website advertised it for a future release along with a mobile version of Tecmo Bowl. The company planned to release the entire game throughout 2004 in a series of four installments—similar to what Upstart Games did when they ported the NES version of Castlevania to mobile phones. The port featured the same visuals and soundtrack as the NES version. Each installment was to consist of several levels of gameplay at a time. The first installment, titled Ninja Gaiden Episode I: Destiny, was released on July 15, 2004; it included only the first Act from the NES version but added two new levels. The second installment was planned to be released in North America and was previewed by GameSpot in September 2004, but it—along with the third and fourth installments—was never released. The mobile phone port of Ninja Gaiden was met with some praise and criticism. IGN's Levi Buchanan and GameSpot's Damon Brown praised the port for its accurate translation from the NES to mobile phones, saying the gameplay, graphics, and cinematic cutscenes remain true to the NES version. They praised the game's controls, despite the omission of the ability to duck so that pressing "down" on the phone's directional pad could be used for secondary weapons; Brown said the port had better controls than most other mobile phone games at the time. They both criticized the port for its lack of sound quality, but Buchanan said this was not Tecmo's fault. In a preview of the port, GameSpot's Avery Score pointed to generally inferior American-made handsets as the reason for the sound's shortcomings. Retro Gamer took a look back at Ninja Gaiden in its March 2004 issue, when the Xbox remake was released. They said the game broke the mold of conventional video game titles by including a plot with cinematic cutscenes added between gameplay segments, adding that the concept of adding cinematics for a game's introduction, plot, and ending was a new concept which "naturally impressed the gaming public". The article noted the game's high level of difficulty, saying the game "threw up an immense challenge even for the veteran gamer, and almost dared you to complete it mentally and physically intact". Chris Kohler, in his 2004 book Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, said, while it was not as far-reaching as Tecmo Bowl, "it ended up revolutionizing video games with its courageous, unique, and trailblazing use of cinema scenes". Upon its release on the Virtual Console, Ninja Gaiden was met with high praise, especially for its elaborate story, amount of narrative, and use of anime-like cinematic sequences. Some critics have bemoaned its gameplay for being too similar to Castlevania; similarities include identical displays on the top of the screen, items contained in breakable lanterns, and a nearly identical "secondary weapons" feature. A 1UP.com review noted that the two games have different dynamics and that several actions possible in Ninja Gaiden would be impossible in Castlevania. Contemporary reviews have considered the game "groundbreaking" for its pioneering use of stylized cutscenes, high quality music, and dark atmosphere. One review said that the game makes up for its high difficulty level with good gameplay. IGN said that it is one of the best platform games of all time. Reviewers have criticized the game for its high and unforgiving difficulty level especially late in the game, and it has been considered an example of "Nintendo Hard" video games. A review by 1UP.com referred to the later levels as an "unfair display of intentional cheapness". In his review of the Virtual Console version, GameSpot's Alex Navarro said "the game will beat you to a pulp" and that it "assaults you time and time again with its punishing difficulty, insidiously placed enemies, and rage-inducing boss fights". According to his review, the game starts easy, but the difficulty begins to increase halfway through the second Act and continues through the sixth Act; Navarro describes the sixth Act's difficulty as "one of the bottom levels of gaming hell". IGN said that the game was one of the most difficult video games of all time, setting the trend for the rest of the series; however, they pointed out that its difficulty and graphics are "defining characteristics [that] have carried over through the years into modern day [Ninja] Gaiden sequels". Nintendo World Report, in a review for the 3DS Virtual Console, acknowledged the game's high difficulty level and highlighted the "rhythm and cadence" to the movement of the player character. ScrewAttack listed the game as the seventh hardest title in the NES library. Over fifteen years after its creation, Ninja Gaiden has maintained its position as one of the most popular games for the NES. A 2006 Joystiq reader poll, with over 12,000 votes, listed the game at No. 10 on a list of top NES games. Another reader poll from GameSpot listed the game at No. 10 in its top 10 NES games list. It was No. 17 on IGN's Top 100 NES Games list. In August 2001 in its 100th issue, Game Informer listed the game at No. 93 in their Top 100 Games of All Time list. In 2006 Electronic Gaming Monthly featured a follow-up to their The 200 Greatest Videogames of Their Time, where readers wrote in and discussed games they felt were ignored on the list; the game was listed at No. 16 of the top 25 games discussed. At the end of 2005, Nintendo Power ran a serial feature titled The Top 200 Nintendo Games Ever. The list, which included games for all Nintendo systems, placed the game at No. 89. In August 2008, the same magazine ranked it the tenth best NES game of all time; they praised the gameplay and described the cinematic cutscenes as revolutionary for its time. The game's music received honorable mention on IGN's list of Best 8-Bit Soundtracks. IGN featured its introduction on its Top 100 Video Game Moments list at \#53; it was also listed as the second best video game cutscene of all time in Complex magazine. Nintendo Power honored the game in its November 2010 issue, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of the NES. The magazine listed its box art, which depicts a ninja with a burning city in the background, as one of its favorite designs in the NES library. The magazine's Editor-in-Chief Chris Slate was equally impressed by the game's box art. He also reminisced about the game's high level of difficulty with its re-spawning enemies and enemy birds that knocked players into pits, saying this game "may have taught me how to curse". He further praised gameplay features such as clinging on walls and using ninpo techniques, and he noted the game's cinematic cutscenes, including the ominous opening sequence that featured two ninjas who launch into the air at each other clashing their swords in the moonlight. He said that "Ninja Gaiden was about as cool as an 8-bit game could be, especially for ninja-crazed kids of the '80s who, like me, had worn out their VHS copies of Enter the Ninja". In a July 2011 issue, Retro Gamer listed the game's opening as one of the most popular at the time. The magazine noted how its use of cutscenes, animations, and overall presentation put the game above most other action titles at the time. While it lauded the controls and gameplay elements, as with other reviews, it criticized the difficulty, calling it "one of the most challenging games on the console". It noted how defeated enemies re-spawn in certain spots, how enemies are placed on the edges of platforms, and the structure of the final level.

Analytical Review

Periodical (London : Printed for J. Johnson, 1788-1799. )

The Analytical Review was an English periodical that was published from 1788 to 1798, having been established in London by the publisher Joseph Johnson and the writer Thomas Christie. Part of the Republic of Letters, it was a gadfly publication, which offered readers summaries and analyses of the many new publications issued at the end of the eighteenth century. Perhaps most important, the Analytical Review provided a forum for radical political and religious ideas. Although it aimed at impartiality, its articles were often critical of the British government and supportive of the French revolutionaries. While the journal had low circulation numbers for its day, it still influenced popular opinion and was feared by the conservative government of William Pitt the Younger. In late 1797, the Anti-Jacobin, the self-styled nemesis of the Analytical Review, was founded by supporters of the government and other reactionary interests; it criticized the radical politics of the Analytical and monitored it for unpatriotic and irreligious sentiments. Organized into separate departments, each with its own chief reviewer, the Analytical Review focused on politics, philosophy, natural history, and literature. To promote a disinterested air, its reviewers were anonymous, signing their work with pseudonymous initials. Nevertheless, the journal recruited several prominent writers, such as the poet William Cowper, the moralist William Enfield, the physician John Aikin and the polemicist Mary Wollstonecraft. The Analytical Review suspended publication in December 1798 after the deaths of Christie (1796) and Wollstonecraft (1797), the conviction of Johnson for seditious libel (1798) and the retirement of other contributing editors. ## Establishment ### Forerunners The Whig Monthly Review, founded in 1749 by Ralph Griffiths, and the Tory Critical Review, founded in 1756 by Tobias Smollett, were the first journals dedicated to reviewing books in Britain. Although they were joined by smaller publications such as the Analytical Review, these two journals dominated reviewing in the second half of the eighteenth century. They focused on poetry, novels, drama, belles-lettres, travel literature, biographies, science writing and other forms of popular literature. They did not review many complex theological or scholarly works, particularly those in foreign languages. Just prior to the founding of the Analytical Review, two periodicals with similar aims had collapsed. The first was the Theological Repository (1770–73; 1784–88), whose driving force was Dissenting theologian, clergyman, and scientist Joseph Priestley. Its articles were intended to be rigorously analytical and attempted to "settl[e] the [Biblical] text by a comparison of various readings; by accurate translation, division, and punctuation; by a concise, well-digested commentary; by notes philosophical and explanatory; and finally by adding doctrinal and moral conclusions". Sold by Joseph Johnson at a low price to encourage a wide readership, the Repository was open to all opinions, provided that they were expressed courteously: "In this Repository not only will room be given to the freest objections to natural or revealed religion, but they are sincerely requested; and nothing that is new will be rejected, if it be expressed in decent terms". Although the Theological Repository was a financial liability for Johnson by 1771, he continued to publish it until 1773 and helped Priestley renew its publication in 1784. A second forerunner of the Analytical Review was Paul Henry Maty's periodical A New Review (published 1782–86), which was likewise devoted to reviewing books and offering a summary of their contents. Like its successor, the New Review paid special attention to foreign literature and took a leading role in introducing German literature to the British public. ### Founding and ideals The demises of the Theological Repository and the New Review left a publishing vacuum; the arrival in London of the author Thomas Christie, who was dedicated to starting a new periodical that would replace and perhaps even improve upon these precursors, was the primary impetus in the creation of the Analytical Review. Johnson and Christie were mutual friends of Priestley and others, and their combined interest in beginning such a journal resulted in the foundation of the Analytical Review. Johnson and Christie's prospectus describes its reviewers as "the HISTORIANS of the Republic of Letters" [emphasis in original]. Literary scholar Paul Keen has described the Republic of Letters as a vision of society in which "all rational individuals could have their say, and in which an increasingly enlightened reading public would be able to judge the merit of different arguments for themselves". The practical goal of the Analytical Review was to facilitate this society by summarizing serious new and foreign publications in great depth so that intelligent readers might form their own opinions. This aim was embodied in its initial title: The Analytical Review; or, History of Literature, domestic and foreign, on an enlarged plan. Containing Scientific Abstracts of important and interesting Works, published in English; a general account of such as are of less consequence, with short characters; Notices, or Reviews of valuable foreign Books; Criticism on New pieces of Music and Works of Art; and the Literary Intelligence of Europe, etc. The periodical sought to avoid ephemeral works and to review only "standard works which add to the stock of human knowledge and will live beyond a day". Johnson and Christie also intended to eschew editorializing and to avoid shaping the tastes of the public. Scrupulous attention to this point was meant to bring the reviewed work into the foreground and not the reviewer (a goal shared by many eighteenth-century journals). An early review, for example, criticized historian Edward Gibbon for "so frequently and unnecessarily obtruding his particular prejudices on the eye of his readers". All editors signed their reviews with initials (sometimes not their own) rather than with their names. This practice was meant to prevent the appearance of collusion between the reviewers and the authors reviewed, although this did not succeed in practice. It was also intended to prevent any unethical puffing, or false advertising, of friends' or one's own books; nevertheless, both Henry Fuseli and Mary Wollstonecraft reviewed their own books for the journal. In repackaging other publications for its readers, the Analytical Review participated in the encyclopedic movement of the eighteenth century, a movement largely begun by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Encyclopédie. Excited and yet overwhelmed by what they viewed as a dramatic increase in human knowledge, encyclopedists of the era aimed to organize and classify all of this new knowledge using a new reference system: the encyclopedia. The Analytical Review was part of this project and its editors believed that they were preserving the knowledge of the past and the present for the future. The journal was, according to scholar Nathaniel Teich, "the most important radical review adopting the encyclopedic format for the attempted universal coverage of published works". Yet, the editors also recognized the ultimate futility of such a project. The Analytical Review was meant to enlighten the public as well as to simplify communication between authors separated by great distances; most importantly, the debates between those authors could be read by the public. In granting authors a public forum in which to communicate, periodicals such as the Analytical helped to define authorship—they encouraged the professionalization of writing and granted prestige to writers and journalists. Unusual for its time, the Analytical Review brought current foreign-language publications, particularly those with a scientific, philosophical, or aesthetic bent, to its readers' attention. For example, it approvingly reviewed Friedrich Schiller's Fiesco (published by Johnson) and argued that more of the author's works should be translated. The Analytical also emphasized the emerging middle-class Protestant work ethic, specifically tying it to scientific knowledge. One issue celebrated successful British merchants, calling them "the most liberal and enlightened men that have appeared in Europe" because of their "love of science" and their "patronage of learned men". ## Organization and reviewers Johnson and Christie set up separate departments for practical sciences, such as mathematics, natural history, agriculture, and medicine; literature, such as poetry, drama, and romance; and finally, politics and religion, which encompassed government, theology, philosophy, morality, law, and trade. For each department, there was a chief reviewer, although he or she might engage others. Although the reviewers' names were not known to the public, Johnson and Christie managed to acquire several luminaries: the poet William Cowper; the popular moralist William Enfield; the writer and physician John Aikin; the poet, essayist, and children's author Anna Laetitia Barbauld; the Unitarian minister William Turner; the physician and literary critic James Currie; the artist Henry Fuseli; the writer Mary Hays; the scholar Alexander Geddes; and the theologian Joshua Toulmin. The reviewers were all paid, however scholars have been unable to discover their rates. Christie was often absent after the founding of the Analytical Review, leaving the day-to-day operations of the journal up to Johnson. In 1790 he went to Paris for six months, during which he met with revolutionary leaders and started a business; in 1792 he returned to help the French translate their constitution and to dissolve his business. He left for Surinam in 1796 to collect money owed to him, and died there. The first issue of the Analytical Review was dated May 1788 and the last issue was dated December 1798. The issues were published monthly and averaged 128 pages. They were also collected into volumes, which consisted of four monthly issues and an appendix (volumes 21–28 switched to a semi-annual publication run without appendices). Each issue contained an extensive table of contents, several major reviews of 10 to 20 pages (sometimes extending to a second issue), many minor reviews, and a "catalogue of books and pamphlets published" during the previous six months. Compared with other major periodicals of its day, the Analytical Review had a low circulation. While both the Tory Critical Review and the British Critic had a circulation of 3,500 by 1797 and the Monthly Review realized 5,000, Johnson and Christie's journal only ever achieved about 1,500. However, it was common practice during the eighteenth century for an individual copy of each publication to be read by many different people. Scholars have estimated that each copy of a London newspaper, for example, was read by thirty people; coffeehouses and taverns were well-stocked with copies of newspapers and journals, as were circulating libraries. Hence, circulation numbers offer only a small glimpse into how many people actually read such publications. Beginning with the Analytical Review'''s third issue, Mary Wollstonecraft became the key editor for dramas, romances, and novels. Scholars have speculated that her reviews are signed by the letters "M", "W", or "T", corresponding roughly to her initials, in large part because they have identified her writing style in these pieces. Her reviews, which number over 200, are generally characterized by their concern for women's issues. Wollstonecraft scholar Mitzi Myers concludes that Wollstonecraft "is not only a pioneer feminist, but also a pioneer feminist critic, whose analysis of the mesh between gender and genre inaugurates the feminist critical project". Wollstonecraft wrote excoriating reviews, criticizing the passive novelistic heroines of the time and praising, for example, the "wise and resilient" Mrs Stafford of Charlotte Smith's autobiographical novel Emmeline (1788). In highlighting this character, she "singles out ... the knowledgeable mother figure who has felt and thought deeply", one who resembles the women she described in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) as having "power ... over themselves". She derides the "derivative, prescriptive, imitative, and affected" and celebrates the "natural, innovative, [and] imaginative". Evincing a particular regard for the works of Thomas Holcroft, such as Anna St. Ives (1792), Wollstonecraft celebrated their championing of innate nobility and virtue over aristocratic titles. Romanticist Anne Chandler argues that Wollstonecraft's reviews demonstrate "an earlier Augustan politics of knowledge, variously outlined by Dryden, Pope, and, to a lesser extent, Swift" which "may be seen in her insistence on a continuum between aesthetic integrity and civic virtue; her belief in a metaphysical dialogue between human wit and divine Nature; and her perception of belletristic criticism as the proper tribunal for a new onslaught of scholarly and scientific research". While writing her last novel, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798), Wollstonecraft took advantage of her position with Johnson and reviewed almost nothing but novels, exposing herself to the wide variety of novelistic forms. The other reviewers have been the focus of far less scholarship. According to Eudo Mason, "Fuseli's peculiar style, his favourite phrases and quotations, themes and ideas make it possible to determine his authorship beyond reasonable doubt in most cases". He signed reviews "Z.Z." and "R.R." (of which there are about 40), initials which appear throughout the run of the journal. He also occasionally signed reviews "Y.Y.", "U.U.", "V.V.", and "L.L." (although this last was used by another reviewer as well). In total, Mason counts 66 reviews, 56 of which he is certain. Fuseli made it a practice to review texts which mentioned him, works written by friends he wanted to assist with flattering reviews, artistic works, and German literature (in particular those written by Johann Gottfried Herder). Geddes, who contributed from the first issue, wrote forty-six articles, almost all on topics of biblical criticism or ecclesiastical history. However, he left the Analytical in September 1793 to edit for the Monthly Review. Cowper, who probably submitted articles under the initials P.P. and G.G., predominantly reviewed poetry. ## Content and political leanings The Analytical Review offered its readers access to a wide variety of works. In July 1789, when the Bastille fell, the Analytical reviewed The Rural Economy of Gloucestershire, Life of Thomas Chatterton, Transactions in Bengal, Military Operations on the Coromandel Coast, Poetry and Music of the Italian Opera, and Histoire Politique de la Revolution en France. The journal also laid provocative facts before the public to prompt them to think and, if necessary, to take action, although it claimed not to advocate one viewpoint over another. For example, when philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke issued his politically controversial Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), the Analytical Review reviewed it extensively, as well as the many responses to it, such as Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), Vindiciae Gallicae (1791) by James Mackintosh, and Rights of Man (1791) by Thomas Paine. However, the majority of the excerpts that the reviewers chose to publish came from the rebuttals to Burke's work. Consistent with Joseph Johnson's attitudes, the Analytical Review tended towards a "moderate radicalism", meaning that it opposed the Pitt administration and celebrated the general values of Paine's Rights of Man. It advocated a moderate reform of Parliament, emphasized the benefits of representative government, and outlined the protections afforded by a separation of powers. While the journal supported the ideals of the French Revolution and opposed Britain's war against France, it did not endorse the violent methods of some of the revolutionaries. Johnson continued his attempts to remain even-handed in political debates, arguing that factionalism in government was detrimental. Helen Braithwaite, in her book on Johnson, argues that "by July 1798 ... the Analytical had become a deep thorn in the side of the government"; at Johnson's trial for seditious libel, an issue of the periodical was entered as evidence against him, demonstrating that the government did not view the journal as non-partisan. Derek Roper, in his survey of late-eighteenth-century periodicals, describes the Analytical as "more radical both in politics and in religion than any other journal". As he explains, however, "these sentiments were not always fully explicit, and might be conveyed through the tone and manner of a summary rather than paragraphs of criticism". Many of the founding members of the Analytical Review were Unitarian and quite a few of its contributors were Dissenters, so contemporaries believed there to be a bias in the journal (most eighteenth-century journals were overtly partisan). Christie attempted to assuage these fears in his advertisement: > It has been insinuated that the Analytical review originated from a party [the Unitarians], and is meant to serve their purposes. We give ourselves little trouble about such reports. The public will soon judge from the execution of our work, whether we are sincere or not in our professions of impartiality, and to them we appeal. This sincere attitude seems to have largely prevailed in practice. Theophilus Lindsey, who had helped establish Unitarianism in Britain, wrote to the Reverend Newcome Cappe to express his displeasure at a review in the first issue of the Analytical, demonstrating that Unitarian theology was not being promulgated by the journal. Furthermore, Johnson chose as his theological reviewer, not a Dissenter as his friend Joseph Priestley urged, but Alexander Geddes, a talented Scot who had been ordained in Paris as a Roman Catholic priest. However, modern scholars have suggested that he did so not for religious reasons, but because Geddes lived in London and had close connections both to Wollstonecraft and Johnson's friend, Henry Fuseli. ## Anti-Jacobin Review The self-styled nemesis of the Analytical Review was The Anti-Jacobin; or, Weekly Examiner (later retitled The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine), a loyalist periodical begun in November 1797 by the writer William Gifford at the suggestion of the politician George Canning, and with the tacit encouragement of the administration of William Pitt. The chief editor and writer was John Richards Green (writing under the pseudonym "John Gifford") together with Andrew Bisset. In its prospectus, the Anti-Jacobin Review announced: > that the channels of criticism have long been corrupted; that many of the Reviews, sinking the critic in the partisan, have insidiously contributed to favour the designs of those writers who labour to undermine our civil and religious establishments, and, by a shameless dereliction of duty, to cast an odium on their opponents. The editors therefore decided to "counteract the pernicious effects of this dangerous SYSTEM" [emphasis in original] and to "restore criticism to its original standard"—they would "frequently review the Monthly, criticise the Critical, and analyse the Analytical Reviews [sic]" [emphasis in original]. The Anti-Jacobin Review published a regular feature, "The Reviewers Reviewed", which analyzed the "Jacobin" reviews for politically unacceptable statements and images. The Anti-Jacobin Review also attacked the Analytical Review for its perceived atheism and for what they deemed its lack of patriotism. During Johnson's 1798 trial for seditious libel for publishing a pamphlet by Gilbert Wakefield, they wrote: > Does he [Johnson] imagine that we do not know that the proprietor of the Analytical Review is himself under prosecution for selling this same pamphlet of Mr. Wakefield's? It is not the prosecution of Mr. Cuthell, then, but the prosecution of Mr. JOHNSON, that excites the indignation of these venal and contemptible critics, as well as that of the whole party [the Unitarians], who are bursting with spite, and thirsting for revenge. It is by his orders to men whom he pays for scribbling in his miserable Review, that every writer who exposes the defects, as they are delicately termed, of Mr. Wakefield's pamphlet, is abused in the most scurrilous and indiscriminate manner. We advise, therefore, these critics, in future, to throw off a mask which will no longer conceal their object, and boldly, if they dare, pronounce a eulogy on the loyalty of this favorite publisher and friend of the PRIESTLEYS, the DARWINS, the GODWINS, and other unprejudiced authors, who have kindly taken upon themselves, for the last twenty years, the important task of enlightening the public mind. [emphasis in original] The Anti-Jacobin also published parodies of the works of liberal poets; most famously, "Loves of the Triangles" mocked Erasmus Darwin's Loves of the Plants (1791). ## Dissolution and brief resurrection After Johnson was convicted on 17 July 1798, and before he was sentenced on 12 February 1799, he tried to prove that he had "uniformly recommended the circulation of such publications as had a tendency to promote good morals instead of such as were calculated to mislead and inflame the Common people". Periodical scholar Stuart Andrews therefore argues that the last issues of the Analytical Review "must be read in the light of Johnson's impending sentence". The June 1798 issue focused on travel literature and female fashions, and although it reviewed Mary Hays's Appeal to the Men of Great Britain on Behalf of Women, it did not do so with any "political bite". In the same months that the Anti-Jacobin Review launched its first critiques of the Analytical and other journals, the Analytical published extensive articles on the picturesque and other aesthetic theories. The editors of the Anti-Jacobin Review took credit for the "dissolution" of the Analytical Review in the preface to their bound 1798 volume, writing: "The other object of our immediate attacks, the Analytical Review, has received its death-blow, and we have more reason to congratulate ourselves upon the share which we have had in producing its dissolution, than it would be expedient here to unfold." They also published a cartoon by Thomas Rowlandson entitled "A Charm for a Democracy, Reviewed, Analysed, & Destroyed". However, scholars attribute the end of Johnson and Christie's journal to Johnson's trial for seditious libel and the ensuing negative publicity, in addition to the deaths of Christie and Wollstonecraft in 1796 and 1797 respectively. After its suspension with the December 1798 issue, the Analytical Review lay dormant until it was briefly revived as The Analytical Review (New Series) during the first six months of 1799. It was printed and sold by T. Hurst of Paternoster Row, apparently without any connection to Johnson or the prior reviewers. Unlike its predecessor, the new series was cautious; it reviewed relatively uncontroversial works and its articles did not have initialled signatures. This series lasted only from January until June 1799. Butler writes that "one marker of the end of the bourgeois republic of letters was the jailing in 1798 of the doyen of publisher-booksellers, Joseph Johnson". Moreover, she explains that the seeming ideological "coherence" of the Republic of Letters, as it was represented in late-eighteenth-century British journals, was eliminated with the founding of the Anglican British Critic in 1792 and the establishment of the Edinburgh Review in 1802. The Edinburgh, according to Butler, "plainly set out to break the mould of existing journal culture". Rather than attempting to cover a wide variety of texts, as had the Analytical Review'' and its cohorts, it focused on only a few texts and restricted itself to subject areas that the editors deemed worthwhile. For example, it emphasized academic fields for which Scottish universities were well-known, such as the natural sciences, moral philosophy, and political economy. Radical political writings, classical studies, clerical writings, and popular literature were either excluded or ridiculed.

Greece runestones

About 30 runestones about voyages made by Norsemen to the Byzantine Empire

The Greece runestones () are about 30 runestones containing information related to voyages made by Norsemen to the Byzantine Empire. They were made during the Viking Age until about 1100 and were engraved in the Old Norse language with Scandinavian runes. All the stones have been found in modern-day Sweden, the majority in Uppland (18 runestones) and Södermanland (7 runestones). Most were inscribed in memory of members of the Varangian Guard who never returned home, but a few inscriptions mention men who returned with wealth, and a boulder in Ed was engraved on the orders of a former officer of the Guard. On these runestones the word Grikkland ("Greece") appears in three inscriptions, the word Grikk(j)ar ("Greeks") appears in 25 inscriptions, two stones refer to men as grikkfari ("traveller to Greece") and one stone refers to Grikkhafnir ("Greek harbours"). Among other runestones which refer to expeditions abroad, the only groups which are comparable in number are the so-called "England runestones" that mention expeditions to England and the 26 Ingvar runestones that refer to a Viking expedition to the Middle East. The stones vary in size from the small whetstone from Timans which measures 8.5 cm (3.3 in) × 4.5 cm (1.8 in) × 3.3 cm (1.3 in) to the boulder in Ed which is 18 m (59 ft) in circumference. Most of them are adorned with various runestone styles that were in use during the 11th century, and especially styles that were part of the Ringerike style (eight or nine stones) and the Urnes style (eight stones). Since the first discoveries by Johannes Bureus in the late 16th century, these runestones have been frequently identified by scholars, with many stones discovered during a national search for historic monuments in the late 17th century. Several stones were documented by Richard Dybeck in the 19th century. The latest stone to be found was in Nolinge, near Stockholm, in 1952. ## Historical background Scandinavians had served as mercenaries in the Roman army many centuries before the Viking Age, but during the time when the stones were made, there were more contacts between Scandinavia and Byzantium than at any other time. Swedish Viking ships were common on the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, the Sea of Marmara and on the wider Mediterranean Sea. Greece was home to the Varangian Guard, the elite bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor, and until the Komnenos dynasty in the late 11th century, most members of the Varangian Guard were Swedes. As late as 1195, Emperor Alexios Angelos sent emissaries to Denmark, Norway and Sweden requesting 1,000 warriors from each of the three kingdoms. Stationed in Constantinople, which the Scandinavians referred to as Miklagarðr (the "Great City"), the Guard attracted young Scandinavians of the sort that had composed it since its creation in the late 10th century. The large number of men who departed for the Byzantine Empire is indicated by the fact that the medieval Scandinavian laws still contained laws concerning voyages to Greece when they were written down after the Viking Age. The older version of the Westrogothic law, which was written down by Eskil Magnusson, the lawspeaker of Västergötland 1219–1225, stated that "no man may receive an inheritance (in Sweden) while he dwells in Greece". The later version, which was written down from 1250 to 1300, adds that "no one may inherit from such a person as was not a living heir when he went away". Also the old Norwegian Gulaþingslög contains a similar law: "but if (a man) goes to Greece, then he who is next in line to inherit shall hold his property". About 3,000 runestones from the Viking Age have been discovered in Scandinavia of which c. 2,700 were raised within what today is Sweden. As many as 1,277 of them were raised in the province of Uppland alone. The Viking Age coincided with the Christianisation of Scandinavia, and in many districts c. 50% of the stone inscriptions have traces of Christianity. In Uppland, c. 70% of the inscriptions are explicitly Christian, which is shown by engraved crosses or added Christian prayers, while only a few runestones are explicitly pagan. The runestone tradition probably died out before 1100, and at the latest by 1125. Among the runestones of the Viking Age, 9.1–10% report that they were raised in memory of people who went abroad, and the runestones that mention Greece constitute the largest group of them. In addition, there is a group of three or four runestones that commemorate men who died in southern Italy, and who were probably members of the Varangian Guard. The only group of stones comparable in number to the Greece runestones are those that mention England, followed by the c. 26 Ingvar runestones raised in the wake of the fateful Ingvar expedition to Persia. Blöndal & Benedikz (2007) note that most of the Greece runestones are from Uppland and relate it to the fact that it was the most common area to start a journey to Greece, and the area from which most Rus' originated. However, as noted by Jansson (1987), the fact that most of these runestones were raised in Uppland and Södermanland does not necessarily mean that their number reflects the composition of the Scandinavians in the Varangian Guard. These two provinces are those that have the greatest concentrations of runic inscriptions. Not all those who are commemorated on the Greece runestones were necessarily members of the Varangian Guard, and some may have gone to Greece as merchants or died there while passing by on a pilgrimage. The fact that a voyage to Greece was associated with great danger is testified by the fact that a woman had runestone U 605 made in memory of herself before she departed on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem: "Ingirún Harðardóttir had runes graven for herself; she would go East and out to Jerusalem. Fótr carved the runes." However, Blöndal and Benedikz (2007) state that although there were other reasons for going to Greece, it is certain that most of the runestones were made in memory of members of the Varangian Guard who died there. Still, some runestones tell of men who returned with increased wealth, and an inscription on a boulder in Ed was commissioned by a former captain of the Guard, Ragnvaldr. ### Purpose The reasons for the runestone tradition are a matter of debate but they include inheritance issues, status and the honouring of the deceased. Several runestones explicitly commemorate inheritance such as the Ulunda stone and the Hansta stone, but the vast majority of the runestones only tell who raised the stone and in memory of whom. A view held by scholars such as Erik Moltke and Sven B. F. Jansson holds that the runestones were primarily the result of the many Viking expeditions from Scandinavia, or to cite Jansson (1987): > When the great expeditions were over, the old trade routes closed, and the Viking ships no longer made ready each spring for voyages to east and west, then that meant the end of the carving and setting up of rune stones in the proper sense of the term. They may be called the monuments of the Viking voyages, and the sensitive reader may catch in many of their inscriptions the Viking's love of adventure and exploits of boisterous daring. Sawyer (2000), on the other hand, reacts against this commonly held view and comments that the vast majority of the runestones were raised in memory of people who are not reported to have died abroad. She argues that few men who went abroad were honoured with memorials and the reason is that the runestones were mainly raised because of concerns at home, such as inheritance issues. Such concerns would have arisen when a family knew that a relative would not return from abroad. ## The runestones Below follows a presentation of the Greece runestones based on information collected from the Rundata project, organised according to location. The transcriptions from runic inscriptions into standardised Old Norse are in Old East Norse (OEN), the Swedish and Danish dialect, to facilitate comparison with the inscriptions, while the English translation provided by Rundata give the names in the standard dialect, Old West Norse (OWN), the Icelandic and Norwegian dialect. ### Transliteration and transcription There is a long-standing practice of writing transliterations of the runes in Latin characters in boldface and transcribing the text into a normalized form of the language with italic type. This practice exists because the two forms of rendering a runic text have to be kept distinct. By not only showing the original inscription but also transliterating, transcribing and translating, scholars present the analysis in a way that allows the reader to follow their interpretation of the runes. Every step presents challenges, but most Younger Futhark inscriptions are considered easy to interpret. In transliterations, \*, :, ×, ' and + represent common word dividers, while ÷ represents less common ones. Parentheses, ( ), represent damaged runes that cannot be identified with certainty, and square brackets, [ ], represent sequences of runes that have been lost, but can be identified thanks to early descriptions by scholars. A short hyphen, -, indicates that there is a rune or other sign that cannot be identified. A series of three full stops ... shows that runes are assumed to have existed in the position, but have disappeared. The two dividing signs | | divide a rune into two Latin letters, because runemasters often carved a single rune instead of two consecutive ones. §P and §Q introduce two alternative readings of an inscription that concern multiple words, while §A, §B and §C introduce the different parts of an inscription as they may appear on different sides of a runestone. Angle brackets, ', indicate that there is a sequence of runes that cannot be interpreted with certainty. Other special signs are þ and ð, where the first one is the thorn letter which represents a voiceless dental fricative as th in English thing. The second letter is eth which stands for a voiced dental fricative as th in English them. The ʀ sign represents the yr rune, and ô is the same as the Icelandic O caudata ǫ. ### Nomenclature Every runic inscription is shown with its ID code that is used in scholarly literature to refer to the inscription, and it is only obligatory to give the first two parts of it. The first part is one or two letters that represent the area where the runic inscription appears, e.g. U for Uppland, Sö for Södermanland and DR for Denmark. The second part represents the order in which the inscription is presented in official national publications (e.g. Sveriges runinskrifter). Thus U 73 means that the runestone was the 73rd runic inscription in Uppland that was documented in Sveriges runinskrifter. If the inscription was documented later than the official publication, it is listed according to the publication where it was first described, e.g. Sö Fv1954;20, where Sö represents Södermanland, Fv stands for the annual publication Fornvännen, 1954 is the year of the issue of Fornvännen and 20 is the page in the publication. ### Uppland There are as many as 18 runestones in Uppland that relate information about men who travelled to Greece, most of whom died there. #### U 73 Runestone U 73 (location) was probably erected to explain the order of inheritance from two men who died as Varangians. It is in the style Pr3 which is part of the more general Urnes style. The stone, which is of greyish granite measuring 2 m (6 ft 7 in) in height and 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in) in width, is raised on a slope some 100 m (330 ft) north of Hägerstalund farm, formerly Hansta(lund). The stone was discovered by Johan Peringskiöld during the national search for historic monuments in the late 17th century. The stone shares the same message as U 72, together with which it once formed a monument, but U 72 was moved to Skansen in 1896. The latter stone relates that "these stones" were raised by Gerðarr and Jörundr in memory of Ernmundr and Ingimundr. Consequently, U 73's phrase "Inga's sons" and "they died in Greece" refer to Ernmundr and Ingimundr. Ernmundr and Ingimundr had inherited from their father, but they departed for the Byzantine Empire and died there as Varangians. As they had not fathered any children, their mother Inga inherited their property, and when she died, her brothers Gerðarr and Jörundr inherited from her. These two brothers then raised the two memorials in honour of their nephews, which was probably due to the nephews having distinguished themselves in the South. However, it may have also been in gratitude for wealth gathered by the nephews overseas. At the same time, the monument served to document how the property had passed from one clan to another. Sawyer (2000), on the other hand, suggests that because the two inscriptions do not mention who commissioned them, the only eventual claimant to the fortune, and the one that had the stones made, may have been the church. The runemaster has been identified as Visäte. #### U 104 Runestone U 104 (original location) is in red sandstone measuring 1.35 m (4 ft 5 in) in height and 1.15 m (3 ft 9 in) in width. It was first documented by Johannes Bureus in 1594. It was donated as one of a pair (the other is U 1160) to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 1687 upon the request of king James II of England to king Charles XI of Sweden asking for two runestones to add to the Oxford University collection. It is in the Urnes (Pr5) style. It was raised by Þorsteinn in memory of his father Sveinn and his brother Þórir, both of whom went to Greece, and lastly in memory of his mother. The stone is signed by the runemaster Öpir whose Old Norse is notable for its unorthodox use of the haglaz rune (ᚼ), as in hut for Old Norse út ("out"). The erratic use of the h-phoneme is a dialect trait that has survived and is still characteristic for the modern Swedish dialect of Roslagen, one of the regions where Öpir was active. #### U 112 Runestone U 112 (location ), a large boulder measuring 18 m (59 ft) in circumference, is beside a wooded path named Kyrkstigen ("church path") in Ed. It has been known to scholars since Johannes Bureus' first runological expedition in 1594, and it dates to the mid-11th century. The boulder bears runic inscriptions on two of its sides, referred to as U 112 A and B. The linguistic significance of the inscriptions lies in the use of the haglaz (ᚼ) rune to denote the velar approximant (as in Ragnvaldr), something that would become common after the close of the Viking Age. The inscription also includes some dotted runes, and the ansuz () rune is used for the phoneme. The inscriptions are in the Urnes style (Pr4), and they were commissioned by a former captain of the Varangian Guard named Ragnvaldr in memory of his mother as well as in his own honour. Very few could boast of returning home with the honour of having been the captain of the Varangian Guard. Moreover, the name Ragnvaldr shows that he belonged to the higher echelons of Old Norse society, and that he may have been a relative of the ruling dynasty. Ragnvald's maternal grandfather, Ónæmr, is mentioned on two additional runestones in Uppland, U 328 and U 336. Runestone U 328 relates that Ragnvaldr had two aunts, Gyríðr and Guðlaug. Additionally, runestone U 336 adds that Ulf of Borresta, who received three Danegelds in England, was Ónæm's paternal nephew and thus Ragnvald's first cousin. He was probably the same Ragnvaldr whose death is related in the Hargs bro runic inscriptions, which would also connect him to Estrid and the wealthy Jarlabanke clan. Considering Ragnvald's background, it is not surprising that he rose to become an officer of the Varangian Guard: he was a wealthy chieftain who brought many ambitious soldiers to Greece. #### U 136 Runestone U 136 (location) is in the Pr2 (Ringerike) style, and it once formed a monument together with U 135. It is a dark greyish stone that is 1.73 m (5 ft 8 in) tall and 0.85 m (2 ft 9 in) wide. In 1857, Richard Dybeck noted that it had been discovered in the soil five years earlier. A small part of it had stuck up above the soil and when the landowner was tilling the land and discovered it, he had it raised again on the same spot. Some pieces were accidentally chipped away by the landowner and the upper parts of some runes were lost. The stone was originally raised by a wealthy lady named Ástríðr in memory of her husband Eysteinn, and Sawyer (2000) suggests it to have been one of several stones made in a tug-of-war over inheritance. There is uncertainty as to why Eysteinn went to Greece and Jerusalem, because of the interpretation of the word sœkja (attested as sotti in the past tense). It means "seek" but it can mean "attack" as on the stones Sö 166 and N 184, but also "visit" or "travel". Consequently, Eysteinn has been identified as one of the first Swedes to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but Jesch (2001) notes that judging from the other runic examples, the "attack" sense is more likely. The translation of sœkja as "attack" is also chosen by the Rundata project (see below). It is one of two Jarlabanke Runestones that mention travellers abroad, the other being U140, below. #### U 140 Runestone U 140 is in Broby (location), near the Broby bro Runestones and U 150. The granite fragment is in Ringerike style (Pr 2). It was discovered by Richard Dybeck among the foundations of a small building. Dybeck searched without success for the remaining parts. Initially, the fragment was moved to a slope near the road between Hagby and Täby church, but in 1930, it was moved next to the road. It is one of the Jarlabanke Runestones and it mentions a man who travelled abroad (compare U 136, above). #### U 201 Runestone U 201 (location) is in the Pr1 (Ringerike) type and it was made by the same runemaster as U 276. The reddish granite stone is walled into the sacristy of Angarn Church c. 0.74 m (2 ft 5 in) above the ground, measuring 1.17 m (3 ft 10 in) in height and 1.16 m (3 ft 10 in) in width. Johannes Bureus (1568–1652) mentioned the stone, but for reasons unknown, it was overlooked during the national search for historic monuments in 1667–1684. Two of the men who are mentioned on the stone have names that are otherwise unknown and they are reconstructed as Gautdjarfr and Sunnhvatr based on elements known from other Norse names. #### U 270 Runestone U 270 was discovered in Smedby (location) near Vallentuna and depicted by Johan Hadorph and assistant, for Johan Peringskiöld, during the national search for historic monuments in 1667–84. Richard Dybeck noted in 1867 that he had seen the runestone intact three years previously, but that it had been used for the construction of a basement in 1866. Dybeck sued the guilty farmer, and the prosecution was completed by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. The documentation from the court case shows that it had been standing at the homestead and that it had been blown up three times into small pieces that could be used for the construction of the basement. Reconstruction of the runestone was deemed impossible. The stone was 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) tall and 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in) wide, and it was raised in memory of a father who appears to have travelled to Greece. #### U 358 The runestone U 358 (location) in the RAK style was first mentioned by Richard Dybeck who discovered the stone in the foundation of the belfry of Skepptuna Church. The parishioners did not allow him to uncover the inscription completely, and they later hid the stone under a thick layer of soil. It was not until 1942 that it was removed from the belfry and was raised anew a few paces away. The stone is in light greyish granite. It is 2.05 m (6 ft 9 in) tall above the ground and 0.78 m (2 ft 7 in) wide. The contractor of the runestone was named Folkmarr and it is a name that is otherwise unknown from Viking Age Scandinavia, although it is known to have existed after the close of the Viking Age. It was on the other hand a common name in West Germanic languages and especially among the Franks. #### U 374 Runestone U 374 was a runestone that once existed in Örby (location). In 1673, during the national search for historic monuments, Abraham Winge reported that there were two runestones standing at Örby. In 1684, Peringskiöld went to Örby in order to document and depict the stones, but he found only one standing (U 373). Instead he discovered the second, or a third runestone, U 374, as the bottom part of a fire stove. The use of the stone as a fireplace was detrimental to the inscription, and the last time someone wrote about having seen it was in 1728. Peringskiöld's drawing is consequently the only documentation of the inscription that exists. The height of the stone was 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) and its width 0.88 m (2 ft 11 in), and it is attributed to the runemaster Åsmund Kåresson. #### U 431 Runestone U 431 (location) was discovered, like U 430, in a field belonging to the inn of Åshusby when stones were blown up in order to prepare the field for growing crops in 1889. As the stone was lying with the inscription side downwards, it was blown up and it was not until the shards were picked up that the runes were discovered. The runestone was mended with concrete and moved to the atrium of the church of Norrsunda. The stone is in bluish grey gneiss, and it measures 1.95 m (6 ft 5 in) in height and 0.7 m (2 ft 4 in) in width. The surfaces are unusually smooth. It is in the Ringerike (Pr2) style, and it is attributed to the runemaster Åsmund Kåresson. It was raised by a father and mother, Tófa and Hemingr, in memory of their son, Gunnarr, who died "among the Greeks", and it is very unusual that the mother is mentioned before the father. #### U 446 A fragment of the runestone U 446 in Droppsta (location) is only attested from a documentation made during the national search for historic monuments in the 17th century, and during the preparation of the Uppland section of Sveriges runinskrifter (1940–1943) scholars searched unsuccessfully for any remains of the stone. The fragment was what remained of the bottom part of a runestone and it appears to have been in two pieces of which one had the first part of the inscription and the second one the last part. The fragment appears to have been c. 1.10 m (3 ft 7 in) high and 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in) wide and its Urnes style is attributed to either Pr3 or Pr4. The runes isifara have been interpreted as æist-fari which means "traveller to Estonia", which is known from an inscription in Södermanland, but they are left as undeciphered by the Rundata project. #### U 518 Runestone U 518 (location) is in the RAK style and is raised on the southern side of a piny slope some 700 m (2,300 ft) north-east of the main building of the homestead Västra Ledinge. The stone was made known by Richard Dybeck in several publications in the 1860s, and at the time it had recently been destroyed and was in several pieces of which the bottom part was still in the ground. In 1942, the stone was mended and raised anew at the original spot. The stone consists of grey and coarse granite. The runestone was made in memory of three men, of whom two died in Greece, while a third one, Freygeirr, died at a debated location written as i silu × nur. Richard Dybeck suggested that it might either refer to the nearby estate of Skällnora or lake Siljan, and Sophus Bugge identified the location as "Saaremaa north" (Øysilu nor), whereas Erik Brate considered the location to have been Salo in present-day Finland. The contemporary view, as presented in Rundata, derives from a more recent analysis by Otterbjörk (1961) who consider it to refer to a sound at the island Selaön in Mälaren. #### U 540 Runestone U 540 (location) is in the Urnes (Pr4) style and it is attributed to the runemaster Åsmund Kåresson. It is mounted with iron to the northern wall of the church of Husby-Sjuhundra, but when the stone was first documented by Johannes Bureus in 1638 he noted that it was used as a threshold in the atrium of the church. It was still used as a threshold when Richard Dybeck visited it in 1871, and he arranged so that the entire inscription was made visible in order to make a cast copy. In 1887, the parishioners decided to extract both U 540 and U 541 from the church and with financial help from the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities the stones were removed and attached outside the northern wall. The stone is of red sandstone and it is 1.50 m (4 ft 11 in) high and 1.13 m (3 ft 8 in) wide. Several parts of the stone and its inscription have been lost, and it is worn down due to its former use as a threshold. A theory, proposed by Germanist F. A. Braun (1910), which is based on the runestones U 513, U 540, Sö 179 and Sö 279, holds the grieving Ingvar to be the same person as Ingvar the Far-Travelled, the son of the Swedish king Emund the Old. Braun notes that the stones were raised at a Husby, a royal residence, and the names Eiríkr (Eric) and Hákon were rather rare in Sweden, but known from the royal dynasty. Önundr would be Anund Gårdske, who was raised in Russia, while Eiríkr would be one of the two pretenders named Eric, and Hákon would be Håkan the Red. These identifications of the three men Eiríkr, Hákon and Ingvarr also appear in the reference work Nordiskt runnamnslexikon (2002), where it adds that Eiríkr is also considered to appear on the Hillersjö stone and runestone U 20. It also identifies Hákon with the one who commissioned the runestones Ög 162 and Ög Fv1970;310. #### U 792 Runestone U 792 (location) is in the Fp style and it is attributed to the runemaster Balli. The stone is in grey granite and it measures 1.65 m (5 ft 5 in) in height and 1.19 m (3 ft 11 in) in width. It was originally raised together with a second runestone, with one on each side of the Eriksgata where the road passed a ford, c. 300 m (980 ft) west of where the farm Ulunda is today. The Eriksgata was the path that newly elected Swedish kings passed when they toured the country in order to be accepted by the local assemblies. The stone was first documented by Johannes Bureus in the 17th century, and later in the same century by Johan Peringskiöld, who considered it to be a remarkable stone raised in memory of a petty king, or war chief, in pagan times. When Richard Dybeck visited the stone, in 1863, it was reclining considerably, and in 1925, the stone was reported to have completely fallen down at the bank of the stream. It was not until 1946 that the Swedish National Heritage Board arranged to have it re-erected. It was raised in memory of a man (probably Haursi) by his son, Kárr, and his brother-in-law. Haursi had returned from Greece a wealthy man, which left his son heir to a fortune. #### U 922 Runestone U 922 (location) is in the Pr4 (Urnes) style and it measures 2.85 m (9 ft 4 in) in height and 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) in width. It is hidden inside the floor in Uppsala Cathedral, next to the tomb of king Gustav Vasa of Sweden. Its existence was first documented by Johannes Bureus in 1594, and in 1666, Johannes Schefferus commented on the stone as one of many runestones that had been perceived as heathen and which had therefore been used as construction material for the cathedral. Schefferus considered U 922 to be the most notable one of these stones and he regretted that parts were under the pillar and that it could thus not be read entirely. In 1675, Olof Verelius discovered that it had been made in memory of a traveller to Greece, but still the French traveller Aubrey de la Motraye wrote home, in 1712, that he had been informed that it had been made in memory of a traveller to Jerusalem. The last scholar to report that the inscription was visible was Olof Celsius in 1729, and it appears that it was soon covered by a new layer of floor. In 1950, professor Elias Wessén and the county custodian of antiquities requested that it be removed for better analysis together with three other runestones, but the request was rejected by the Royal Board of Construction (KBS) because of safety concerns. Ígulbjörn also appears on a second runestone in Uppsala Cathedral, U 925, made by Ígulbjörn in memory of his son Gagʀ who died "in the South", with "South" likely referring to the Byzantine Empire. #### U 956 Runestone U 956 (location) was carved by the runemaster Åsmund Kåresson in runestone style Pr3 or Urnes style. It is one of two surviving inscriptions that indicate Åsmund's patronym, the other being GS 11 in Järvsta. This stone is raised at Vedyxa near Uppsala, about 80 m (260 ft) east of the crossroads of the road to Lövsta and the country road between Uppsala and Funbo. The stone is in grey granite and it has an unusual shape with two flat surfaces and an obtuse angle between them. The inscription is 2.27 m (7 ft 5 in) high, of which the upper part is 1.37 m (4 ft 6 in) and the lower part 0.9 m (2 ft 11 in), and the width is 0.95 m (3 ft 1 in). U 956 was first documented by Johannes Haquini Rhezelius (d. 1666), and later by Johan Peringskiöld (1710), who commented that the inscription was legible in spite of the stone having been split in two parts. Unlike modern scholars, Peringskiöld connected this stone, like the other Greece runestones, to the Gothic wars in south-eastern Europe from the 3rd century and onwards. Olof Celsius visited the stone three times, and the last time was in 1726 together with his nephew Anders Celsius. Olof Celsius noted that Peringskiöld had been wrong and that the stone was intact, although it gives an impression of being split in two, and the same observation was made by Richard Dybeck in 1866. #### U 1016 Runestone U 1016 (location) is in light grey and coarse granite, and it is 1.91 m (6 ft 3 in) high and 1.62 m (5 ft 4 in) wide. The stone stands in a wooded field 5 m (16 ft) west of the road to the village Fjuckby, 50 m (160 ft) of the crossroads, and about 100 m (330 ft) south-south-east of the farm Fjuckby. The first scholar to comment on the stone was Johannes Bureus, who visited the stone on 19 June 1638. Several other scholars would visit the stone during the following centuries, such as Rhezelius in 1667, Peringskiöld in 1694, and Olof Celsius in 1726 and in 1738. In 1864, Richard Dybeck noted that the runestone was one of several in the vicinity that had been raised anew during the summer. Parts of the ornamentation have been lost due to flaking, which probably happened during the 17th century, but the inscription is intact. The art on the runestone has tentatively been classified under style Pr2, but Wessén & Jansson (1953–1958) comment that the ornamentation is considered unusual and it is different from that on most other runestones in the district. Other stones in the same style are the Vang stone and the Alstad stone in Norway, and Sö 280 and U 1146 in Sweden. The style was better suited for wood and metal and it is likely that only few runemasters ever tried to apply it on stone. Similar the inscription on U 1011, this runic inscription uses the term stýrimaðr as a title that is translated as "captain". Other runestones use this term apparently to describe working as a steersman on a ship. There have been several different interpretations of parts of the inscription, but the following two interpretations appear in Rundata (2008): #### U 1087 Runestone U 1087 (former location) was an unusually large and imposing runestone in the Urnes (Pr4) style, but it has disappeared. Before it was lost, it was studied and described by several scholars such as Bureus, Rhezelius, Peringskiöld and lastly by Olof Celsius in 1726. Peringskiöld commented that the stone was reclining backwards in a hop-garden at the eastern farm of Lövsta, which was later confirmed by Celius in 1726. Stolpe tried to find it, but noted in 1869 that the landowner knew of the runestone, but that the latter had reported it to be completely covered in soil, and in 1951, a runologist tried to locate the runestone but failed. The inscription had an unusual dotted k-rune in girkium ("Greece") which it had in common with U 922, above, but the only difficulty that has arisen in the interpretation of the runes is the sequence onar. Rhezelius read it as a name, Onarius, which would have belonged to a third son, whereas Verelius, Peringskiöld, Dijkman and Celsius interpreted it as the pronoun annarr meaning "the other" and referring to Ótryggr, an interpretation supported by Wessén and Jansson (1953–1958), and by Rundata (see below). ### Södermanland There are seven runestones in Södermanland that relate of voyages to Greece. Two of them appear to mention commanders of the Varangian Guard and a second talks of a thegn, a high ranking warrior, who fought and died together with Greeks. #### Sö Fv1954;20 The runestone Sö Fv1954;20 (location) was discovered in 1952 approximately 500 m (1,600 ft) west-south-west of Nolinge manor during the plowing of a field, together with an uninscribed stone. It was consequently part of a twin monument and they had been positioned about 2–3 m apart on both sides of a locally important road, where they had marked a ford. Both stones had lost their upper parts and the present height of the runestone is 1.52 m (5 ft 0 in) (of which 1.33 m (4 ft 4 in) is above ground) and it is 0.55 m (1 ft 10 in) wide. It is classified as being carved in runestone style Fp. #### Sö 82 Runestone Sö 82 (location) is in granite, and it measures 1.18 m (3 ft 10 in) in height and it is 1.30 m (4 ft 3 in) wide. It was formerly under a wooden threshold inside Tumbo church, and the upper part was hidden under the wall of the atrium. Most of the inscription and the artwork have been destroyed, but what remains is classified as either style Fp or Pr1 (Ringerike style). The inscription partly consists of cipher runes. The stone was raised by Vésteinn in memory of his brother Freysteinn who died in Greece, and according to Omeljan Pritsak, Freysteinn was the commander of a retinue. The wolf-beast image in the center of Sö 82 touches the inscription at the name Freysteinn and has its jaws at the word for "was dead" or "died." Since one known kenning in Old Norse poetry for being killed in battle was that the "wolf was fed," the combination of the text and imagery would lead to the conclusion that Freysteinn had died in battle in Greece. Although the memorial stone image includes a Christian cross, the two personal names in the inscription both refer to Norse paganism. Þorsteinn includes as a name element the god Thor and means "Thor's stone," while Vésteinn includes the word vé, a temple or sanctuary, and when used in a personal name means "holy," giving the name the meaning "holy stone." #### Sö 85 Runestone Sö 85 (location) is a runestone in style KB that measures 1.23 m (4 ft 0 in) in height. The granite stone was discovered at a small brook, but in 1835 the runestone was destroyed. Some pieces were brought to Munkhammar and Mälhammar where they were used for the construction of fireplaces. Seven remaining pieces were brought to Västerby in 1855 in order to be protected by a fence, but when a scholarly enquiry took place in 1897, only four pieces remained. An association of local antiquarians arranged so that the four remaining parts could be reassembled at Västerby. #### Sö 163 Runestone Sö 163 (location) is in the style Fp and it is of grey gneiss measuring 1.22 m (4 ft 0 in) in height and 1 m (3 ft 3 in) in width. The runestone was first documented during the national search for historic monuments in 1667–84 and Peringskiöld noted that it was near the village of Snesta between Ryckesta and the highway. In 1820, the stone was reported to be severely damaged and mostly hidden in the ground due to its being on the side of a local road. George Stephens reported in 1857 that its former position had been on a barrow at a small path near Ryckesta, but that it had been moved in 1830 to the avenue of the manor Täckhammar and reerected on a wooded slope some 14 paces from the entrance to the highway. The man who raised the stone is named with the runes þruʀikr and the name was identified as Þrýríkr by Sophus Bugge who identified the first element of the name as the noun þrýð- that would be derived from a \*þrūði- and correspond to Old English þrýðu ("power", "force"). The Old English form is cognate with the Old Icelandic element þrúð- ("force") which appears in several Old Norse words in connection with the Norse god Thor. This analysis was accepted by Brate & Wessén although they noted that the name contains ʀ instead of the expected r, whereas the Rundata corpus gives the slightly different form Þryðríkr. The stone was raised in memory of two sons, one of whom went to Greece where he "divided up gold", an expression that also appears on runestone Sö 165, below. It can either mean that he was responsible for distributing payment to the members of the Varangian Guard or that he took part in the division of loot. Düwel has suggested that the expression is the eastern route equivalent of gjaldi skifti ("divided payment") which appears in the nearby stone Sö 166 that talks of payments to Vikings in England (see also U 194, U 241 and U 344). If so, the expression could mean that the man who was commemorated had received payment. #### Sö 165 Runestone Sö 165 (location) is tentatively categorised as being in the RAK style. It is of grey granite and is 1.61 m (5 ft 3 in) tall and 0.57 m (1 ft 10 in) wide. The runestone was first documented during the national search for historic monuments (1667–81) and then it was raised near a number of raised stones. Later the runestone was moved and raised beside Sö 166 at a ditch southwest of Grinda farm. It was raised by a mother, Guðrun, in memory of her son, Heðinn. Like runestone Sö 163, it also reports that the man concerned went to Greece and "divided up gold" which may refer to distributing payment to members of the Varangian guard, the division of loot or having received payment (compare Sö 163, above). The inscription itself is a poem in fornyrðislag. #### Sö 170 Runestone Sö 170 in grey granite is raised north of the former road in Nälberga (location), and the stone is 1.85 m (6 ft 1 in) tall and 0.80 m (2 ft 7 in) wide. Its style is tentatively given as RAK and some of the runes are cipher runes in the form of branch runes. The runic text tells that a man named Báulfr died with the Greeks at a location that has not been clearly identified through several analyses of the cipher runes. Läffler (1907) suggested that the location is to be read Ίθὡμη which is the Greek name for the town and stronghold Ithomi, Messenia, also called Θὡμη. Báulfr is described as being þróttar þegn or a thegn of strength. The term thegn describes a class of retainer. The phrase þróttar þegn is used on six other runestones, Sö 90 in Lövhulta, Sö 112 in Kolunda, Sö 151 in Lövsund, and Sö 158 in Österberga, and, in its plural form at Sö 367 in Släbro and Sö Fv1948;295 in Prästgården. Omeljan Pritsak (1981) comments that among those who raised the memorial, the youngest son Guðvér would rise to become the commander of the Varangian Guard in the mid-11th century, as shown in a second mention of Guðvér on the runestone Sö 217. That stone was raised in memory of one of the members of Guðvér's retinue. #### Sö 345 Runestone Sö 345 (location) was first documented during the national search for historic monuments in 1667, and it was then used as a doorstep to the porch of Ytterjärna church. It had probably been used for this purpose during a considerable period of time, because according to a drawing that was made a few years later, it was very worn down. In 1830 a church revision noted that it was in a ruined state and so worn that only a few runes remained discernible, and when Hermelin later depicted the stone, he noted that the stone had been cracked in two pieces. In 1896, the runologist Erik Brate visited the stone and discovered that one of the pieces had disappeared and that the only remaining part was reclining on the church wall. The remaining piece measured 1.10 m (3 ft 7 in) and 1.15 m (3 ft 9 in). The stone has since then been reassembled and raised on the cemetery. Parts B and C are probably not part of the monument and are not translated. ### Östergötland In Östergötland, there are two runestones that mention Greece. One, the notable Högby Runestone, describes the deaths of several brothers in different parts of Europe. #### Ög 81 The Högby runestone (location) is in Ringerike (Pr1) style, and the reddish granite stone measures 3.45 m (11.3 ft) in height and 0.65 m (2 ft 2 in) in width. It was formerly inserted into the outer wall of Högby church with the cross side (A) outwards. The church was demolished in 1874, and then side B of the inscription was discovered. The stone was raised anew on the cemetery of the former church. The runestone commemorates Özurr, one of the first Varangians who is known to have died in the service of the Byzantine Emperor, and he is estimated to have died around 1010, or in the late 10th century. He was one of the sons of the "good man" Gulli, and the runestone describes a situation that may have been common for Scandinavian families at this time: the stone was made on the orders of Özur's niece, Þorgerðr, in memory of her uncles who were all dead. Þorgerðr probably had the stone made as soon as she had learnt that Özurr, the last of her uncles, had died in Greece, and she likely did this to ensure her right of inheritance. The inscription on the reverse side of the stone, relating how her other uncles died, is in fornyrðislag. Her uncle Ásmundr probably died in the Battle of Fýrisvellir, in the 980s, and it was probably at the side of king Eric the Victorious. Özurr had entered into the service of a more powerful liege and died for the Byzantine Emperor. Halfdan may have died either on Bornholm or in a holmgang, whereas where Kári died remains uncertain. The most likely interpretation may be that he died on Od, the old name for the north-western cape of Zealand, but it is also possible that it was at Dundee in Scotland. Búi's location of death is not given, but Larsson (2002) comments that it was probably in a way that was not considered as glorious as those of his brothers. #### Ög 94 Runestone Ög 94 (location) in the style Ringerike (Pr1), is in reddish granite and it raised on the former cemetery of Harstad church. The stone is 2 m (6 ft 7 in) high and 1.18 m (3 ft 10 in) wide at its base. The toponym Haðistaðir, which is mentioned in the inscription, refers to modern Haddestad in the vicinity, and it also appears to mention Greece as the location where the deceased died, and it was probably as a member of the Varangian guard. Additionally, the last part of the inscription that mentions the location of his death is probably a poem in fornyrðislag. ### Västergötland In Västergötland, there are five runestones that tell of eastern voyages but only one of them mentions Greece. #### Vg 178 Runestone Vg 178 (location) in style Pr1 used to be outside the church of Kölaby in the cemetery, some ten metres north-north-west of the belfry. The stone consists of flaking gneiss measuring 1.85 m (6 ft 1 in) in height and 1.18 m (3 ft 10 in) in width. The oldest annotation of the stone is in a church inventory from 1829, and it says that the stone was illegible. Ljungström documented in 1861 that it was in the rock fence with the inscription facing the cemetery. When Djurklou visited the stone in 1869, it was still in the same spot. Djurklou considered its placement to be unhelpful because a part of the runic band was buried in the soil, so he commanded an honourable farmer to select a group of men and remove the stone from the wall. The next time Djurklou visited the location, he found the stone raised in the cemetery. ### Småland There was only one rune stone in Småland that mentioned Greece (see Sm 46, below). #### Sm 46 Runestone Sm 46 (location) was in the style RAK and it was 2.05 m (6 ft 9 in) high and 0.86 m (2 ft 10 in) wide. The stone was already in a ruined state when Rogberg depicted the stone in 1763. Rogberg noted that it had been used as a bridge across a brook and because of this the runes had been worn down so much that most of them were virtually illegible, a statement that is contradicted by later depictions. Since the runestone had passed unnoticed by the runologists of the 17th century, it is likely that it was used as a bridge. In a traveller's journal written in 1792 by Hilfeling, the bottom part of the stone is depicted for the first time, though the artist does not appear to have realised that the two parts belonged together. In 1822, Liljegren arrived to depict it. A surviving yet unsigned drawing is attributed to Liljegren (see illustration). In 1922, the runologist Kinander learnt from a local farmer that some 40 years earlier, the runestone had been seen walled into a bridge that was part of the country road, and the inscription had been upwards. Someone had decided to remove the runestone from the bridge and put it beside the road. Kinander wanted to see the stone and was shown a large worn down stone in the garden of Eriksstad. However, according to Kinander it was not possible to find any remaining runes on what was supposed to be the runestone. ### Gotland Only one runestone mentioning the Byzantine Empire has been found on Gotland. This may be due both to the fact that few rune stones were raised on Gotland in favour of image stones, as well as to the fact that the Gotlanders dealt mainly in trade, paying a yearly tribute to the Swedes for military protection. #### G 216 G 216 (original location) is an 8.5 cm (3.3 in) long, 4.5 cm (1.8 in) wide and 3.3 cm (1.3 in) thick sharpening stone with a runic inscription that was discovered in 1940. It was found by a worker at a depth of 40 cm (16 in) while he dug a shaft for a telephone wire in a field at Timans in Roma. It is now at the museum Gotlands fornsal with inventory number C 9181. It has been dated to the late 11th century, and although the interpretation of its message is uncertain, scholars have generally accepted von Friesen's analysis that it commemorates the travels of two Gotlanders to Greece, Jerusalem, Iceland and the Muslim world (Serkland). The inscription created a sensation as it mentions four distant countries that were the targets of adventurous Scandinavian expeditions during the Viking Age, but it also stirred some doubts as to its authenticity. However, thorough geological and runological analyses dispelled any doubts as to its genuine nature. The stone had the same patina as other Viking Age stones on all its surfaces and carvings, and in addition it has the normal r-rune with an open side stroke, something which is usually overlooked by forgerers. Moreover, v Friesen commented that there could be no expert on Old Swedish that made a forgery while he correctly wrote krikiaʀ as all reference books of the time incorrectly told that the form was grikir. Jansson, Wessén & Svärdström (1978) comment that the personal name that is considered most interesting by scholars is Ormika, which is otherwise only known from the Gutasaga, where it was the name of a free farmer who was baptised by the Norwegian king Saint Olaf in 1029. The first element ormr ("serpent") is well known from the Old Norse naming tradition, but the second element is the West Germanic diminutive -ikan, and the lack of the final -n suggests a borrowing from Anglo-Saxon or Old Frisian, although the name is unattested in the West Germanic area. The runologists appreciate the appearance of the nominative form Grikkiaʀ ("Greece") as it is otherwise unattested while other case forms are found on a number of runestones. The place name Jerusalem appears in the Old Gutnish form iaursaliʀ*' while the westernmost dialect of Old Norse, Old Icelandic, has Jórsalir, and both represent a Scandinavian folk etymological rendering where the first element is interpreted as the name element jór- (from an older \*eburaz* meaning "boar"). The inscription also shows the only runic appearance of the name of Iceland, while there are five other runic inscriptions in Sweden that mention Serkland. ## See also - List of runestones - Piraeus Lion - Trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks

Holkham National Nature Reserve

Nature reserve in the United Kingdom

Holkham National Nature Reserve is England's largest national nature reserve (NNR). It is on the Norfolk coast between Burnham Overy Staithe and Blakeney, and is managed by Natural England with the cooperation of the Holkham Estate. Its 3,900 hectares (9,600 acres) comprise a wide range of habitats, including grazing marsh, woodland, salt marsh, sand dunes and foreshore. The reserve is part of the North Norfolk Coast Site of Special Scientific Interest, and the larger area is additionally protected through Natura 2000, Special Protection Area (SPA) and Ramsar listings, and is part of both an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and a World Biosphere Reserve. Holkham NNR is important for its wintering wildfowl, especially pink-footed geese, Eurasian wigeon and brant geese, but it also has breeding waders, and attracts many migrating birds in autumn. Many scarce invertebrates and plants can be found in the dunes, and the reserve is one of the only two sites in the UK to have an antlion colony. This stretch of coast originally consisted of salt marshes protected from the sea by ridges of shingle and sand, and Holkham's Iron Age fort stood at the end of a sandy spit surrounded by the tidal wetland. The Vikings navigated the creeks to establish Holkham village, but access to the former harbour was stopped by drainage and reclamation of the marshes between the coast and the shingle ridge which started in the 17th century, and was completed in 1859. The Holkham estate has been owned by the Coke family, later Earls of Leicester since 1609, and their seat at Holkham Hall is opposite the reserve's Lady Anne's Drive entrance. The 3rd Earl planted pines on the dunes to protect the pastures reclaimed by his predecessors from wind-blown sand. The national nature reserve was created in 1967 from 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) of the Holkham Estate and 2,200 hectares (5,400 acres) of foreshore belonging to the Crown. The reserve has over 100,000 visitors a year, including birdwatchers and horse riders, and is therefore significant for the local economy. The NNR has taken steps to control entry to the fragile dunes and other areas important for their animals or plants because of the damage to sensitive habitats that could be caused by unrestricted access. The dunes are an essential natural defence against the projected rises in sea level along this vulnerable coast. ## Description The reserve lies to the north of the A149 coast road, starting just west of Burnham Overy Staithe and extending west past Holkham to Beach Road, Wells-next-the-Sea. It also includes the tidal salt marshes continuing further east to Blakeney. Its total area of about 3,900 hectares (9,600 acres) makes it the largest NNR in England. The reserve can be accessed by footpaths from Wells and the local villages including the Peddars Way/Norfolk Coast long-distance trail that traverses the main part of the reserve, and National Cycle Route 1 loops through the core of the NNR between Holkham and Wells. There is a car park near Holkham village at the north end of Lady Anne's Drive that gives access to two bird hides, and another parking area at the end of Beach Road in Wells. To the east of the Wells Channel, the reserve is mainly salt marshes and mud flats, and is difficult and potentially dangerous to access, although a public footpath runs along the southern edge of these tidal areas. The salt marshes on this coast are stated in the Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) notification document to be "among the best in Europe ... the flora is exceptionally diverse". Holkham also has good examples of sand dunes, and the pines planted on the dunes have provided shelter for other trees and shrubs to become established, making this the only substantial area of woodland in the North Norfolk Coast SSSI. The dunes are created and altered by the elements, and the sand islands in Holkham Bay have formed only within the last 60 years. The flat ground inland from the dunes is a reclaimed salt marsh that was used as pasture until the 1940s, but converted to arable land during World War II. The value of the fields to wildlife was reduced by the resulting lower water table, but Natural England's management measures have raised the water levels, attracting breeding and wintering birds. Water management can also be used to ensure a high water table in summer, benefiting breeding waders, and drier conditions in winter, preferred by the geese. The management of water levels and grassland increased the number of breeding wetland birds from 120 pairs of ten species in 1986 to 795 pairs of 26 species in 1994, and the number of wintering birds of four key wildfowl species rose from 1,215 to 17,305 in the decade from 1983/84. ## History Norfolk has a long history of human occupation. Both modern and Neanderthal people were present in the area between 100,000 and 10,000 years ago, before the last glaciation, and humans returned as the ice retreated northwards. The archaeological record is poor until about 20,000 years ago, partly because of the then prevailing very cold conditions, but also because the coastline was much further north than at present. As the ice retreated during the Mesolithic (10,000–5,000 BCE), the sea level rose, filling what is now the North Sea. This brought the Norfolk coastline much closer to its present line, so that many ancient sites are now under the sea in an area now known as Doggerland. The coast at Holkham originally consisted of salt marshes protected from the sea by ridges of shingle and sand. A large Iron Age fort (Holkham Camp) at the end of a sandy spit in the marshes could only be approached along the spit; it enclosed 2.5 hectares (6.2 acres) and remained in use until the defeat of the Iceni in 47 AD. The Vikings navigated the tidal creeks to establish Holkham, the name deriving from the Danish for "ship town". The Holkham Estate has been owned by the Coke family since 1609, and Holkham Hall, built by Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester between 1734 and 1764, is opposite the NNR entrance. Until the 17th century, ships could navigate the tidal creeks to reach the staithe (harbour) at Holkham village, but local landowners began to reclaim the marshes from 1639, and the final embankment at Wells was constructed by the 2nd Earl in 1859, completing the conversion of about 800 hectares (2,000 acres) to farmland. The 3rd Earl planted Corsican, maritime and Scots pines on the dunes in the late 19th century to shelter the agricultural land from wind-blown sand, which is carried inland when the wind speed exceeds three metres (10 ft) per second and blows from directions between northwest to northeast. The Holkham National Nature Reserve was created in 1967 from 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) of the Holkham Estate and 2,200 hectares (5,400 acres) of intertidal sand and mud flats belonging to the Crown Estate. In 1986 the NNR was subsumed into the newly created 7,700 hectares (19,000 acres) North Norfolk Coast SSSI. The larger area is now additionally protected through Natura 2000, Special Protection Area (SPA) and Ramsar listings, and is part of the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The coast from Holkham NNR to Salthouse, together with Scolt Head Island, is a Biosphere Reserve. ## Flora and fauna ### Birds As many as 50,000 pink-footed geese, 13,000 Eurasian wigeon and 7,000 Brent geese winter at Holkham, making it of international importance for these species. Up to 400 white-fronted geese and a few tundra bean geese may join the wildfowl flocks, and the odd peregrine falcon, short-eared owl, merlin, marsh harrier or hen harrier may hunt over the fields. The shingle banks and foreshore hold wintering flocks of shore larks, snow buntings and twite, and waders like knots, curlews, dunlins and grey plover probe for invertebrates in the mud flats. Spring migration is relatively quiet, although sightings of ring ouzel and firecrest are possible amongst the more common arrivals. Breeding birds include lapwings, common snipe, pied avocets, common redshanks and marsh harriers on the grazing marshes, ringed plovers and little terns on the beach, and black-headed, herring and lesser black-backed gulls on the salt marsh. The small grey heron colony has been joined by little egrets, and, from 2010, by Eurasian spoonbills. In 2020, a pair of cattle egrets successfully bred at the site, the first time the species had successfully bred in Norfolk. The pines may occasionally have nesting siskins or common crossbills, and parrot crossbills bred in 1984 and 1985. Holkham's north-facing coastal location can attract large numbers of migrating birds in autumn if the weather conditions are right, especially with north to north-east wind. The common species may be accompanied by a wryneck, red-backed shrike or greenish warbler in August, with goldcrests, thrushes and finches later in the season, and perhaps red-breasted flycatchers and yellow-browed warblers. Vagrant rarities such as Pallas's, Radde's or dusky warblers may occur; a red-breasted nuthatch in 1989 was the first, and, as of 2019, the only individual of its species to be recorded in the UK. ### Other animals and plants Brown hares and European otters are found all along the north Norfolk coast, but red squirrels disappeared from the Holkham pines by 1981. The rare natterjack toad breeds at Holkham, one of only two sites along this coast, although the common frog, common toad and common lizard are widespread in appropriate habitats. The green hairstreak, purple hairstreak, comma, hummingbird hawk-moth, broad-bordered bee hawk-moth and ghost moth are sometimes seen in the woods with the common butterfly and moth species, and a clouded yellow or Camberwell beauty may also occur in some years. Grayling, small heath and common blue butterflies can be found in the dunes, where there is also a large antlion colony, making Holkham one of only two locations for this predatory insect in the UK. Dragonflies include the migrant hawker, southern hawker and ruddy darter. On exposed parts of the coast, the mud and sands are scoured by the tides, and have no vegetation except possibly algae or eelgrass, but where the shoreline is more protected, internationally important salt marshes can form, with several uncommon species. The salt marsh contains glassworts and annual seablite in the most exposed regions, with a succession of plants following on as the marsh becomes more established: first sea aster, then mainly sea lavender, with sea purslane in the creeks and smaller areas of sea plantain and other common marsh plants. Scrubby sea-blite and matted sea lavender are characteristic plants of the drier upper salt marsh here, although they are uncommon in the UK away from the Norfolk coast. Grasses such as sea couch grass and sea poa grass are important in the driest areas of the marshes, and on the coastal dunes, where marram grass, sand couch-grass, lyme-grass and red fescue help to bind the sand. Sea holly and sand sedge are other specialists of this arid habitat, and petalwort is a nationally rare bryophyte found on damper dunes. Bird's-foot trefoil, pyramidal orchid, bee orchid, lesser centaury and carline thistle flower on the more stable dunes, where the rare Jersey cudweed and grey hair-grass are also found. The narrow 5-km (3-mi) belt of pines shelters creeping lady's tresses and yellow bird's nest. ## Recreation A 2005 survey at Holkham and five other North Norfolk coastal sites found that 39 per cent of visitors gave birdwatching as the main purpose of their visit. The 7.7 million day visitors and 5.5 million who made overnight stays in the area in 1999 are estimated to have spent £122 million, and created the equivalent of 2,325 full-time jobs. Holkham NNR is one of three sites within the SSSI that attract 100,000 or more visitors annually, the others being Titchwell Marsh and Cley Marshes. The large number of visitors at coastal sites sometimes has negative effects. Wildlife may be disturbed, a frequent difficulty for species that breed in exposed areas such as Ringed Plovers and Little Terns, and also for wintering geese. Plants can be trampled, which is a particular problem in sensitive habitats such as dunes and vegetated shingles. The discovery of the nationally rare tiny earthstar fungus at Holkham led its finders to state that "The survival of this species in Britain would undoubtedly benefit from the construction of a boardwalk across this fragile and frequently-visited habitat." The Little Tern colony at Holkham, holding seven per cent of the British population, is cordoned off in the breeding season, with signs explaining why people are excluded from the area. The dune vegetation can be damaged by too many people walking over it, leading to blowout, and the rapid wind erosion of the sand. Boardwalks and steps enable visitors to reach the beach on foot without harming the dunes, and horse riders and naturists are asked to stay on the beach and keep off the dunes. As the climate becomes warmer in the future, there is likely to be more tourism pressure on the coasts, but the effects of this may be mitigated by a move towards lower-impact activities like bathing. The Norfolk Coast Partnership, a grouping of conservation and environmental bodies, divides the coast and its hinterland into three zones for tourism development purposes. Holkham Dunes, along with Holme Dunes and Blakeney Point, were considered to be sensitive habitats already suffering from visitor pressure, and were designated as red-zone areas with no development or parking improvements to be recommended. The rest of the NNR is placed in the orange zone, for locations with fragile habitats but less tourism pressure. ## Threats The underlying geology of the North Norfolk coast is Cretaceous chalk, exposed at Hunstanton cliffs just to the west of the SSSI, but buried by soft Quaternary glacial debris for the entire length of the SSSI coast. Unlike the soft, rapidly eroding cliffs further east, the coast of the SSSI has shown a less consistent pattern, with a net accretion of beach material between 1880 and 1950. However, this coastline is threatened by climate change, with the sea level rising an estimated 1–2 mm per year for the last 100 years, increasing the risk of flooding and coastal erosion. Half the area of the salt marshes that formed in the lee of Scolt Head Island has been reclaimed in the last 300 years, creating ecologically important, but very fragile, grazing marshes. Although Holkham is low-lying and can flood in severe weather conditions, it is protected by the spit that developed at the Holkham Gap in the 1990s and the dunes along the coast, which are increasingly being stabilised by vegetation. The Environment Agency's management plan until 2105 is to rely on the natural protection of the dunes, intervening only if work is necessary to maintain their effectiveness in the face of a potential sea level rise of 1.1 m (3 ft) by that date. The shingle that makes up Scolt Head Island is moving westwards and southwards at up to 3.5 m (10 ft) per year. This may affect the movement of sediment, and lead to some erosion of the dunes and beaches at Holkham, but should not destroy their effectiveness as a sea defence unless the island reattaches to the mainland at some date in the distant future. ## Cited texts

MLS Cup 1999

1999 edition of the MLS Cup

MLS Cup 1999 was the fourth edition of the MLS Cup, the championship match of Major League Soccer (MLS), the top-level soccer league of the United States. It took place on November 21, 1999, at Foxboro Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, and was contested by D.C. United and the Los Angeles Galaxy in a rematch of the inaugural 1996 final that had been played at the same venue. Both teams finished atop their respective conferences during the regular season under new head coaches and advanced through the first two rounds of the playoffs. United won 2–0, with first-half goals from Jaime Moreno and Ben Olsen, gaining their third MLS Cup victory in four years. Galaxy defender Robin Fraser left the match with a broken collarbone during the opening minutes and goalkeeper Kevin Hartman collided with John Maessner at the end of the half. Olsen was named the most valuable player of the match with his goal to close out the first half, which was scored off a misplayed backpass. The final was played in front of 44,910 spectators. It was the first MLS match to be played with a standard game clock and without a tiebreaker shootout following a rule change approved by the league days earlier. The Galaxy blamed their performance on decisions by referee Tim Weyland and the quality of the pitch at Foxboro Stadium, which had a narrowed width and was damaged by an earlier National Football League game. Both finalists qualified for the 2000 CONCACAF Champions' Cup, which was hosted in Southern California. The tournament's semifinals featured a rematch of the MLS Cup final and was decided in a penalty shootout that the Galaxy won. The Galaxy went on to win the tournament, becoming the second MLS team to do so. ## Venue The 1999 final was played at Foxboro Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, where the inaugural final had been contested in 1996. MLS announced the stadium as the host venue on October 23, 1998, and the match was scheduled three weeks later than previous editions to avoid conflicting with baseball's World Series. The scheduled date of November 14 was later moved back to November 21. The match was originally planned to be hosted at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, but issues with the Tampa Bay Mutiny's lease at the stadium led to MLS revoking their hosting rights. Foxboro was selected ahead of bids from Washington, D.C., and San Jose, California, as well as an unsubmitted speculative bid from Chicago. The match was played six days after a home game for the New England Patriots of the National Football League, necessitating the retention of the stadium's bleacher sections. As a result, the field was narrowed from 72 yards (66 m) to 68 yards (62 m), and had visible dirt patches and yard lines. Approximately 30,000 tickets were sold before the finalists were confirmed. ## Road to the final The MLS Cup is the post-season championship of Major League Soccer (MLS), a professional club soccer league based in the United States that began playing in 1996. Twelve teams contested the league's fourth season; teams were organized into two conferences, each playing 32 matches during the regular season from March to September. Teams faced opponents from the same conference four times during the regular season, and from outside their conference twice. Before the season began, MLS reduced the number of permitted international players from five to four as a cost-saving measure. The top four teams from each conference qualified for the playoffs, which were organized into three rounds and played primarily in October. The first two rounds, named the Conference Semifinals and Conference Finals, were home-and-away series organized into a best-of-three format with a hosting advantage for the higher-seeded team. The winners of the Conference Finals advanced to the single-match MLS Cup final, which would be held at a predetermined neutral venue. MLS Cup 1999 was contested by two-time champions D.C. United and the Los Angeles Galaxy, both of which had played in the inaugural 1996 final, which ended in a 3–2 overtime victory for United. The 1996 final had also been played at Foxboro Stadium, and the 1999 match was the fourth consecutive MLS Cup appearance for United. The 1999 final was the first to be contested by the regular season winners of both conferences. During the regular season, the Galaxy and United met twice, each winning on the road. ### Los Angeles Galaxy Since their MLS Cup 1996 appearance, the Los Angeles Galaxy had qualified for the playoffs twice but were eliminated in earlier rounds. During the 1998 regular season, the team finished atop the league standings with a 24–8 record, which included a run of nine consecutive wins and a record 85 goals. The Galaxy earned two shootout wins at the start of the 1999 season but then lost three consecutive matches where they scored only three goals in total. The club dismissed Zambrano on April 21 and replaced him with Sigi Schmid, who had managed UCLA Bruins for 19 years and the men's national under-20 team for two years. Under Schmid, the Galaxy won a playoff berth by early September and rose to first in the West alongside the Colorado Rapids. The team finished the season with a 20–12 record and 54 points, and became the first MLS team to allow an average of less than one goal per match during the regular season with 29 goals in 32 matches. Schmid was named Coach of the Year, Hartman earned Goalkeeper of the Year, and Robin Fraser won Defender of the Year for their regular season performances. In the Western Conference Semifinals, the Galaxy faced the Rapids, who had finished fourth in the conference and failed to score in their last five consecutive matches. The Galaxy hosted the first leg and led with an eighth-minute strike from defender Ezra Hendrickson, but had midfielder Simon Elliott sent off with a red card ten minutes later. The team extended their lead from a penalty scored in the 52nd minute by Greg Vanney and a strike five minutes later by Mathis that Colorado goalkeeper Ian Feuer deflected into the net for a 3–0 victory. The Galaxy defeated the Rapids 2–0 at Mile High Stadium in Denver, scoring twice in the final 15 minutes through midfielders Danny Pena and Joe Franchino, to complete a two-match sweep in the series. The Galaxy advanced to play the Western Conference Final against the Dallas Burn, who had finished second in the conference and eliminated defending champions Chicago. The Galaxy won the first leg, which was played at the Rose Bowl, 2–1 with a goal from Ezra Hendrickson that was scored with 40 seconds remaining in the match. The Galaxy twice took the lead during the second leg at the Cotton Bowl through a brace from Carlos Hermosillo but Dallas equalized to force a tie-breaking shootout. Dallas won 4–3 in the shootout, forcing a deciding third leg at the Rose Bowl. The Galaxy clinched their place in their second MLS Cup final with a 3–1 win, having taken advantage of the Burn's weakened defense in their starting lineup due to an injury and suspension. Greg Vanney scored from a penalty in the second minute, which was followed by goals from Hermosillo and Mauricio Cienfuegos to extend the lead; Jason Kreis scored a late consolation goal for Dallas. ### D.C. United D.C. United had played in the first three MLS Cup finals, winning in 1996 and 1997 against the Galaxy and Colorado Rapids, respectively. Following their loss in the 1998 final to the Chicago Fire, manager Bruce Arena left the team to join the U.S. men's national team and was replaced by New England head coach Thomas Rongen. During the early part of their season, United played without several injured starting players and reserves, forcing the starting lineup to change several times. The team also lost several players to national team call-ups during the Copa América, but was able to take first place in the Eastern Conference. The team lost six starting players to national teams at the FIFA Confederations Cup in July. Rongen turned to a lineup of reserves, including an inexperienced four-man defense, minor-league players, and new acquisitions to secure a playoff berth in late August. The team also clinched first in the Eastern Conference in mid-September, having amassed a 15-point lead over the second-place Columbus Crew. During the regular season, United won 17 of their 20 matches against opponents in the Eastern Conference and finished atop the league with 57 points. United played Miami Fusion, who had a 13–9 record in the regular season, in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. United won 2–0 in the first leg, which they hosted at RFK Stadium; forward Jaime Moreno scored in the 34th and 88th minutes. The second leg in Florida ended 0–0 after regulation time and was decided in a shootout that United won 3–2. Goalkeeper Tom Presthus, having stopped four goals in regulation time, made four saves during the six-round shootout. In a repeat of the previous two Eastern Conference Finals, United played the Columbus Crew, who had defeated the Tampa Bay Mutiny. United took a lead in the series at RFK Stadium in the first leg, winning 2–1 with a strike from Moreno in the 15th minute and a volley from Ben Olsen in the 72nd minute. The second leg in Columbus ended in a 5–1 victory for the hosts, giving United their worst playoff defeat and forcing a third match in the series. Roy Lassiter scored early for United in the sixth minute but the Crew responded with first-half goals from Ansil Elcock and Jeff Cunningham, and a hat-trick from Stern John in the second half. United recovered in the third leg to win 4–0 and extended their unbeaten streak at home in the playoffs to 12 matches. Moreno scored in the 17th minute and was joined by a brace from Roy Lassiter on both sides of half-time, the latter coming from a bicycle kick in the penalty area. Marco Etcheverry, who had provided three assists on the earlier goals, scored a free kick from 23 yards (21 m) with four minutes remaining to clinch a MLS Cup final berth for United. ### Summary of results #### Regular season #### Playoffs - Note: In all results below, the score of the finalist is given first (H: home; A: away). Playoffs were in best-of-three format with penalty shootout (SO) if scores were tied. ## Broadcasting and entertainment The MLS Cup final was broadcast in the United States by ABC with English commentary, and Spanish commentary was available via secondary audio programming. The ABC broadcast was led by play-by-play announcer Phil Schoen and color commentator Ty Keough, who were joined by studio host Rob Stone. MLS players John Harkes and Alexi Lalas joined the pre-game and half-time broadcasts as co-hosts. ABC deployed 18 cameras for the match and added field microphones to capture crowd noise. The television broadcast on ABC drew a 1.0 national rating (approximately 1.16 million viewers), a 17 percent decline from 1998, partially due to competition from National Football League games. Pop singer Christina Aguilera sang the U.S. national anthem before the match and performed in the half-time show. ## Match ### Match rules The MLS Board of Governors, composed of team owners and their representatives, met in Boston before the MLS Cup to revise the league's match rules. Several of the league's experimental rules were eliminated in an effort to match international standards set by the International Football Association Board in the Laws of the Game and to appeal to hardcore fans. The countdown clock that was tracked via the stadium scoreboard was replaced with a normal match clock that was kept by the referee on the field; injury time was added at the end of each half, as displayed by the fourth official. Tiebreaker shootouts were replaced with two periods of sudden-death golden goal overtime that would be followed by a standard penalty shootout if the score remained tied. Although the shootout change was planned to take effect at the start of the 2000 season, after consulting with coaches Schmid and Rongen, league commissioner Don Garber announced the revised clock and tiebreaker would be used at MLS Cup 1999. ### Summary The MLS Cup final was played on November 21 in front of 44,910 spectators at Foxboro Stadium, surpassing the attendance of the previous MLS Cup at the stadium. Approximately 5,000 D.C. United fans, including the club's two largest supporters groups Barra Brava and Screaming Eagles, traveled to the match. The match began at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time under sunny skies with a temperature of 63 °F (17 °C), unlike the cold and rainy conditions of the 1996 final. The field was described as "badly scarred" due to a National Football League game at the stadium earlier in the week, which also caused the pitch to be narrowed to 68 yards (62 m). United took early control of the match and challenged the Galaxy defense on several plays. In the seventh minute, Galaxy defender Robin Fraser fell after being pushed from behind by Roy Lassiter on a play while challenging for the ball. Fraser left the match with a broken left collarbone and was replaced by Steve Jolley. Schmid adjusted Galaxy's defense into a three-man formation. Fraser later said he had been wearing a shoulder brace that restricted movement of his arm for most of the season, which prevented him from breaking the fall. Referee Tim Weyland did not award a foul for the play, for which Schmid and Galaxy players later criticized him. United then attempted to take advantage of the weakened Galaxy defense as both teams pushed aggressively for an opening goal, trading several chances. United took the lead in the 19th minute on a long throw-in from Marco Etcheverry that was misplayed by Jolley and fell to Lassiter, whose shot was saved by Kevin Hartman. Caligiuri failed to clear the ball, and Jaime Moreno converted from point-blank range. The Galaxy responded with a promising scoring opportunity off a corner kick taken by Greg Vanney in the 32nd minute. Danny Pena's header hit the goalpost and John Maessner deflected it toward the goal but the ball was cleared away by Richie Williams. The Galaxy protested to Weyland that the ball had crossed the line and struck Williams' hand but no foul was given. The Galaxy and United traded more scoring chances as the first half ended; play stopped in the 43rd minute after Maessner, who was clearing the ball, kneed Harman in the head. Hartman returned to the match and stopped a 22-yard (20 m) volley from United defender Jeff Agoos at the beginning of stoppage time, which Weyland set at four minutes. The Galaxy immediately responded with a counterattack led by Jones, who was clipped in the penalty area by Maessner though Weyland did not award a penalty. In the third minute of stoppage time, Hartman misplayed a backpass from Jolley while under pressure from Lassiter and Moreno. Ben Olsen intercepted Hartman's pass to Caligiuri and scored from just outside the six-yard box to give United a 2–0 lead at half-time. United looked to extend their lead in the second half but were unable to convert an early chance in the 47th minute as Lassiter headed a cross from Agoos wide of the goal. A breakaway chance in the 58th minute for Jones was thwarted by Carlos Llamosa, who tackled away a loose ball in the United penalty area. Galaxy attackers Mauricio Cienfuegos and Carlos Hermosillo were kept in check by United, particularly by defensive midfielder Richie Williams. Jones was left to attack on his own. Pena gave Galaxy two chances to score but Agoos blocked his first shot and the second went wide of the goal. With 20 minutes left to play, the teams traded back-to-back chances that were not finished. In the 71st minute, Olsen received a chipped pass from Etcheverry and shot towards the goal but hit the side netting. A minute later, a volley by Clint Mathis in the penalty area was struck wide of the goal. Williams then attempted a 23-yard (21 m) volley in the 76th minute that struck the post after beating Hartman's outstretched arm. In the match's last major action, Caligiuri attempted a drive from inside the box but his shot went wide of the goal. With six minutes remaining, Olsen was named the MLS Cup most valuable player (MVP). United goalkeeper Tom Presthus made one save during the match, on one of the Galaxy's two shots on goal. ### Details ## Post-match After winning three titles in four seasons, D.C. United were hailed as the first MLS dynasty despite the league's attempts to encourage parity among teams. Commissioner Don Garber stated he thought it was "terrific to have a dominant team" when asked whether United's performance would hurt the league but added he would "love some balance". United's players celebrated with cigars and champagne in the locker room following the near-collapse of the stage that had been set up for the trophy ceremony. Olsen became the first MLS Cup MVP to have been developed as part of the Project-40 program. On November 23, United were honored with a ten-block parade along Pennsylvania Avenue in Downtown Washington, D.C., which was attended by thousands of fans. United went on to miss the playoffs for three consecutive seasons but would win another MLS Cup in 2004 by defeating the Kansas City Wiz. After the match, Hartman attributed his miscue on the second goal to the poor condition of the pitch, which United defender Jeff Agoos also criticized. Galaxy coach Sigi Schmid, along with Jones and Hermosillo, were fined for criticizing referee Tim Weyland's calls; Schmid was also suspended for the first match of the 2000 season. Schmid highlighted the lack of calls after Fraser's injury and two potential penalties in the first half, along with fouls throughout the match. The Galaxy reached the MLS Cup final in 2001, losing to the San Jose Earthquakes, and won their first title in 2002 against New England at Gillette Stadium, which had replaced Foxboro Stadium. As of 2022, the Los Angeles Galaxy holds the record for the most MLS Cup titles, winning their fifth in 2014 to overtake United's record. As MLS Cup finalists, D.C. United and the Los Angeles Galaxy qualified as the U.S. representatives for the 2000 CONCACAF Champions' Cup, which was hosted in Southern California in January 2001. The two teams met in the semifinals, where the Galaxy defeated United in a penalty shootout following a 1–1 draw. The Galaxy won the tournament, becoming the second US club to win a CONCACAF competition and the last until Seattle Sounders FC in 2022. They earned a place in the 2001 FIFA Club World Championship, which was set to be played in Spain but was later cancelled amid a financing scandal.

Van Buren raid

1862 raid of the American Civil War

The Van Buren raid occurred in Crawford County, Arkansas, on December 28, 1862, during the American Civil War. After defeating Confederate forces led by Major General Thomas C. Hindman at the Battle of Prairie Grove on December 7, 1862, Union forces under Brigadiers General James G. Blunt and Francis J. Herron prepared for a raid against the Confederate positions at Van Buren and Fort Smith. Disease, lack of supplies, and desertion had previously forced Hindman to begin withdrawing most of his force from the area. Setting out on December 27, the Union troops struck an outlying Confederate cavalry unit near Drippings Spring, north of Van Buren, on the morning of December 28. The Confederate cavalry fled to Van Buren, which was then overrun by Union troops. The Union pursued and captured three steamboats on the Arkansas River, and captured some Confederate troops and many supplies in Van Buren. Across the river in Fort Smith, the Confederates destroyed supplies and also burned two steamboats trapped upriver. An artillery duel took place at Van Buren, and after nightfall a minor skirmish was fought downriver at Strain's Landing. After the raid, Hindman withdrew his men to Little Rock and the Union force returned from the raid, unable to maintain a supply line to Van Buren across the Boston Mountains. The battle of Prairie Grove and the Van Buren raid broke Confederate strength in the region. ## Background After the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States in 1860, several southern states considered seceding from the union. In the southern state of Arkansas, anti-secessionists were initially strong, slavery being considered a key issue. The successful bombardment of Fort Sumter by Confederate troops in seceded territory on April 12 swung political opinion toward secession. The state convention voted to secede on May 6, and Arkansas joined the Confederate States of America. After significant military activity in Missouri throughout 1861, Major General Earl Van Dorn of the Confederate States Army formed the Army of the West in Arkansas in early March 1862 from forces commanded by Missouri State Guard Major General Sterling Price and Confederate Brigadier General Ben McCulloch. Van Dorn moved his army north towards the Union army of Major General Samuel R. Curtis, but was defeated at the Battle of Pea Ridge on March 7 and 8. After the defeat at Pea Ridge, Van Dorn moved most of the Confederate soldiers and supplies in Arkansas east of the Mississippi River and into Tennessee, leaving very little military organization in the state. In May, Major General Thomas C. Hindman was placed in command of Confederate forces in the state, with a task of rebuilding Confederate strength in the area. Although Hindman was successful in rebuilding Confederate strength and stabilizing the military situation in Arkansas, his methods were unpopular and sometimes extralegal. He was replaced by Major General Theophilus Holmes, who arrived at Little Rock on August 12. Hindman retained a field command under Holmes and pushed the troops under his command into northern Arkansas and southwestern Missouri. His command was known as the First Corps of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi. Holmes had Hindman return to Little Rock in September, leaving his troops where they were. A militia officer, Brigadier General James S. Rains of the Missouri State Guard, commanded in Hindman's absence. Despite winning the First Battle of Newtonia under the command of Colonel Douglas H. Cooper and Joseph O. Shelby, the Confederates in southwestern Missouri withdrew in early October as Union troops commanded by Brigadier Generals James G. Blunt and John Schofield approached. The Union commands were then combined by Schofield into the Army of the Frontier. Hindman returned from Little Rock on October 15. Some of Schofield's men had entered Arkansas, but in early November, Schofield withdrew all of them except for Blunt's division to Springfield, Missouri. Hindman decided to attack with the Union forces divided, and after his cavalry fought with Blunt in the Battle of Cane Hill, began moving north across the Boston Mountains on December 3. The mountains were high, rugged, and brushy. Union troops commanded by Brigadier General Francis J. Herron began a long movement from Springfield on December 4 to reinforce Blunt. Late on December 6, Hindman learned that Herron had arrived to reinforce Blunt and would be in the area the next day. In response, Hindman changed his plan to strike Herron first at Prairie Grove and then attack Blunt. Instead of acting aggressively against Herron as planned on December 7, Hindman took up a defensive position and awaited Herron's assault. Hindman's men fought with Herron's until Blunt's men arrived and turned the tide for the Union. Hindman realized that his battered army did not have enough food or ammunition to fight again, and with the Union having been reinforced, fell back to Van Buren beginning the night after the battle. Forage for horses was scarce in the Van Buren area, and Hindman sent some of his cavalry, commanded by Brigadier General John S. Marmaduke, 100 miles (160 km) to the south to Lewisburg. While at Van Buren, Hindman's force also suffered greatly from disease and desertion. Van Buren was located on the north bank of the Arkansas River, with Fort Smith to the southwest on the south bank of the river. The Arkansas River provided a key communication and transportation pathway in a state largely devoid of infrastructure and the Arkansas River Valley was an agricultural area important for feeding the Confederate army. North of the river were the Boston Mountains. ## Early maneuvers Hindman decided that it would be impractical to keep the majority of his force north of the Arkansas River in Van Buren given the condition of his army, and pulled most of his men south of the Arkansas to Fort Smith. Hindman left one infantry regiment and some artillery in Van Buren. The 1st Texas Partisan Rangers, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Richard Phillip Crump was posted at Dripping Springs, which was about 8 miles (13 km) north of Van Buren, with instructions to guard the roads from the north, despite Crump having previously been reprimanded for inattentiveness. Holmes visited the Van Buren area on December 21, and ordered Hindman to withdraw his forces to Lewisburg, where the men could be better supplied via the river. According to historian Ed Bearss, Hindman decided to leave the brigades of Brigadier General John S. Roane's Texas cavalry and Cooper's Native American troops in the area of Fort Smith and the Indian Territory, although Roane's brigade was soon disbanded due to heavy desertion and was replaced with a brigade of Arkansas infantry commanded by Colonel Robert G. Shaver. Shea instead states that the forces left behind were one infantry brigade and one cavalry regiment. Hindman began to move the sick and any supplies not needed for the rearguard out of Fort Smith on December 23. The main Confederate force began withdrawing on December 26, and were still loading supplies onto river transports without a sense of urgency on December 28. On December 28, there were about 5,000 Confederates in the area, primarily south of the Arkansas River. After resting for three days following Prairie Grove, Herron and Blunt decided to move south against Hindman with 8,000 men, although this movement was delayed by a heavy snowstorm. The weather eventually broke, and late on December 25, the two Union officers decided it was time to resume the advance. After spreading disinformation on December 26, that the Union thrust was headed for Huntsville, the movement began the next morning, with 8,000 men and 30 cannons. The Union troops traveled during cold weather and over ground that was in places covered with snow. Artillery and wagons had difficulty moving through thick mud. The commands of Blunt and Herron traveled separately, taking different routes. ## Raid On the morning of the 28th, Blunt's cavalry was at the head of his force. The cavalry halted at Oliver's Store on the Telegraph Road for Blunt's infantry and artillery to catch up. Herron's cavalry joined Blunt's at the store, and Herron and Blunt interviewed local Unionists to learn of the locations of Crump's camp and outposts. Herron's infantry had not arrived yet, but he had 3,000 cavalrymen present. Blunt had seniority over Herron and took overall command. With the 2nd Kansas Cavalry Regiment in the lead, the Union cavalrymen headed south, and 2 miles (3 km) from the store and 8 miles (13 km) from Dripping Springs, encountered some of Crump's pickets. Blunt ordered the cavalry to drive all the way to the Arkansas River. Crump heard the firing and took two companies to investigate. Encountering the 2nd Kansas Cavalry 3 miles (5 km) north of their camp, Crump's patrol fled back to the camp. By the time Crump returned to prepare his surprised men for battle, the Union troopers were almost upon them. Three Union units – the 2nd Kansas Cavalry, the 6th Kansas Cavalry Regiment, and the 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry Regiment – were deployed around 10:00 am, and Colonel William F. Cloud brought up two mountain howitzers. After six rounds from the cannons, the Union cavalry charged. Crump's Texans quickly fled, and although Crump managed to rally a force three times, the Union cavalry drove all the way to Van Buren in only an hour. The pursuing cavalry, led by Cloud, halted at a hill overlooking the Arkansas River, allowing Blunt and Herron to personally catch up to the force. When the Union troops charged down the hill, Herron sent part of the 1st Missouri Cavalry Regiment to the east to cut off a road that the Confederates could use to retreat. By the time the Union troops entered Van Buren, most of the Confederates had already boarded steamboats on the Arkansas River or were using a ferry to cross the river. Some convalescent soldiers and men from the commissary and quartermaster departments were captured by the Union soldiers in Van Buren. The steamboats withdrawing down the river had been loaded with some of Hindman's supplies before the Union attack struck, and to speed their escape, some of the cargo was thrown overboard. Scouts informed Blunt that there was a bend in the river 2 miles (3 km) below Van Buren, and Cloud was sent there with a brigade and two cannons to try to intercept the steamboats. The rearmost ship, Frederick Notrebe, was caught by the 2nd Kansas Cavalry. According to Shea, the Kansans fired into the ship, forcing its crew's surrender; Bearss states that the ship's crew intentionally ran the ship aground and abandoned the vessel. Two more steamers, Rose Douglass and Key West continued downriver. Rose Douglass was fired on and then boarded by Union cavalry, and Key West surrendered at Strain's Landing 6 miles (10 km) or 10 miles (16 km) below Van Buren. The vessel had stopped at the landing for unknown reasons and was then caught up to by Union cavalry. One of the Union mountain howitzers fired on the ferry at Van Buren, killing the horse powering it, although the soldiers on board were able to escape across the river. Union troops also captured the steamer Violet in Van Buren, and took three ammunition wagons and twenty-seven wagons with supplies during the chase of the other steamboats. Rose Douglass, Key West, and Frederick Notrebe were returned to Van Buren by the early afternoon. While Blunt and Herron discussed the prospects of making an attack across the river to Fort Smith, the Confederates brought up troops on the far side of the river. At Fort Smith, Hindman had learned of the Union attack at about 10:00 am. He ordered Shaver's brigade, which was 2 miles (3 km) away, to go to Fort Smith, and ordered Brigadier General Daniel M. Frost, who was with his division 10 miles (16 km) toward Little Rock, to send a detachment of infantry and artillery to Strain's Landing and the rest of his force to Fort Smith. By the time Shaver reached Fort Smith, Union troops had already held Van Buren for about two and a half hours. Shaver had West's Arkansas Battery fire on the town with four 6-pounder smoothbore cannons. Herron viewed this as an outrage, as the town sheltered many civilians as well as the Union troops. The Confederates fired for two hours, and Union artillery was brought up to support the infantry. The 1st Kansas Battery deployed on the hill overlooking the river and fired into Shaver's position at about 4:00 pm with four 10-pounder Parrott rifles. Shaver had not expected to encounter Union artillery, and with Union overshots landing among Shaler's Arkansas Infantry Regiment, ordered a withdrawal. The Union artillery did not detect the retreat and continued firing, while the Union infantry completed its march to Van Buren at about 7:00 pm. An hour after dark, Cloud sent the 2nd Kansas Cavalry and 1st Kansas Battery back down to Strain's Landing, where he had noticed a Confederate camp during the chase after the steamboats. When the Union units arrived, the position was held by Tilden's Missouri Battery and part of Hunter's Missouri Infantry Regiment, that had been sent there by Frost. According to Bearss, the Confederate artillery fired upon the Union positions until driven off by the Kansan artillery; Shea states that the Confederates were under orders not to waste ammunition and withdrew after the start of the Union bombardment. Two Confederate transports had been trapped upstream by the Union attack, and were burned. Hindman had given orders to abandon Fort Smith and if necessary, burn it. After the Union attack struck Van Buren, the Confederates panicked and burned wharves and warehouses in Fort Smith. In the words of Shea, Hindman's orders were carried out with "more enthusiasm and less judgment" than intended. ## Aftermath Convinced that he could not hold Fort Smith against a Union assault, and with everything worth protecting destroyed, Hindman decided to withdraw, leaving only Cooper's brigade and two cavalry regiments in the general area to harass the Union troops. On the morning of December 29, Blunt sent a scouting party across the river, which found that the only Confederates remaining at Fort Smith were 600 sick and wounded. A Union patrol was sent to burn the two transports upriver, but found that the Confederates had already done so. After plundering the town the night after the raid, the Union forces held a military parade that day to impress the local civilians. The Union troops freed several hundred slaves. Supplies that could be sent northward were carried off, and anything they could not carry, including a large quantity of corn, the ferry, and the steamboats, was burned. Blunt, Herron, Colonel Daniel Huston Jr., and 14 men from the 1st Missouri Cavalry briefly crossed the Arkansas river, apparently so that Blunt, Herron, and Huston could claim that they were the first Union officers to cross it. Union troops found Confederate messages in a telegraph office, garnering a significant amount of military intelligence. Overall, the Confederates had lost 25,000 bushels of grain, 42 wagons, and quantities of equipment and ammunition. Blunt could not operate a supply line across the Boston Mountains, and decided to withdraw that day. Herron led the withdrawal with the infantry and artillery, leaving after sunset. Schofield caught up with the expedition during Herron's withdrawal, but allowed Blunt to remain in command despite Schofield being the senior officer. Blunt left Van Buren with the cavalry on December 30, and the raid was over by the next day, when the Union troops arrived at Rhea's Mill. According to Shea, Union losses were two killed and six wounded; the Encyclopedia of Arkansas reports Union losses of one man killed and five wounded. Confederate losses are not known, but Shea estimates about a dozen were killed, two dozen wounded, and a few hundred captured and then paroled. By January 8, 1863, only parts of two Confederate cavalry regiments and one infantry regiment remained at Fort Smith. Holmes ordered Hindman to abandon the Fort Smith area, and the Confederates spent the beginning of 1863 retreating to Little Rock. Cooper's men went to the Indian Territory, and a small force led by William Steele remained at Forth Smith; Union troops captured the post on September 1, 1863. The battle of Prairie Grove and the Van Buren raid had broken Confederate strength in the region; the historian Shelby Foote wrote that "practically speaking, [Hindman] had no army". Cavalry raids and guerrilla warfare continued in the area, but fighting between large-scale armies did not occur in the region after Prairie Grove and Van Buren.

Thomas F. Mulledy

American Jesuit priest (1794–1860)

Thomas F. Mulledy SJ (/mʌˈleɪdi/ muh-LAY-dee; August 12, 1794 – July 20, 1860) was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who became the president of Georgetown College, a founder of the College of the Holy Cross, and a Jesuit provincial superior. His brother, Samuel Mulledy, also became a Jesuit and president of Georgetown. Mulledy entered the Society of Jesus and was educated for the priesthood in Rome, before completing his education in the United States. He twice served as president of Georgetown College in Washington, D.C. At Georgetown, Mulledy undertook a significant building campaign, which resulted in Gervase Hall and Mulledy Hall (later renamed Isaac Hawkins Hall). He became the second provincial superior of the Maryland Province of the Jesuit order, and orchestrated the sale of the province's slaves in 1838 to settle its debts. This resulted in outcry from his fellow Jesuits and censure by the church authorities in Rome, who exiled him to Nice in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia for several years. While provincial superior, Mulledy was also the vicar general for the Diocese of Boston. Following his return to the United States, Mulledy was appointed as the first president of the College of the Holy Cross in 1843 and oversaw its establishment, including the construction of its first building. Both in the United States and in Rome, he developed a reputation as combative and insubordinate, much to the discontent of his fellow Jesuits and his superiors. Others praised him for his administrative skills. In his later years, he was prolific in delivering sermons at Holy Cross, and played a role in seeing the college through investigations by the Know Nothing Party. He also served as pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church and president of St. John's Literary Institution in Frederick, Maryland, where he expelled a significant portion of the student body for protesting the strict discipline he imposed, leading to the school's permanent decline. He then was assigned as pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown, and briefly as the superior at Saint Joseph's College in Philadelphia. In 2015, Georgetown renamed Mulledy Hall due to Mulledy's involvement in the 1838 slave sale. His name was also removed from a building at the College of the Holy Cross in 2020. ## Early life and education Thomas Mulledy was born on August 12, 1794, in Romney, Virginia (today part of West Virginia), to Irish immigrant parents. His father, also named Thomas Mulledy, was a poor farmer. His mother, Sarah Cochrane, from Virginia, was not Catholic. So the two could marry, they obtained a canonical dispensation, and agreed that their sons would be raised Catholic, while their daughters would be raised Protestant. Before receiving any higher education, Thomas Mulledy and his brother, Samuel, taught at the Romney Academy in their hometown. Like his brother, Samuel went on to become a Jesuit and the president of Georgetown College. Thomas later enrolled as a student at Georgetown College in Washington, D.C., on December 14, 1813, having to pay for his own education, as his brother did. He left the school in February 1815 to travel with nine others to White Marsh Manor in Prince George's County, Maryland, where they entered the Society of Jesus. He returned to teach at Georgetown in 1817. While there, he contracted a disease that was unknown to the physicians of the time, and he feared death was imminent. In his debilitated state, he received the viaticum, and was thereafter restored to health, a turn of events that some considered miraculous. He was appointed by the Virginia General Assembly to the board of trustees for the town of Romney in 1818. In 1820, he was sent to study philosophy in Rome; on the voyage, he was accompanied by Charles Constantine Pise, James Ryder, and George Fenwick. There, he studied at the Pontificio Collegio Urbano de Propaganda Fide for two years, and spent a further two as a tutor to the crown prince of Naples. Alongside his priestly studies, he was exposed to literature and science, and became regarded as among the most eminent American scholars of Italian language and literature. Mulledy was ordained a priest in Rome in 1825, and then began his tertianship in Chieri, near Turin. By 1828, he was teaching logic, metaphysics, and ethics at a Jesuit college in Chambéry. He left Italy later that year. It was not until December 1827 that the Society raised enough money to pay for his and other Jesuit students' return to the United States, and that the Jesuit Superior General was satisfied that the Society had regained a footing in the United States after its suppression. He left from the port of Livorno on a treacherous voyage that lasted 171 days, and caused some in the United States to fear that the three Jesuits aboard had perished. Eventually, he arrived at Georgetown on December 22, 1828, where he was made the prefect of studies, as well as professor of philosophy. Mulledy provided the most comprehensive account of the mysterious events at Wizard Clip at the time. ## Georgetown College ### First presidency Mulledy was appointed president of Georgetown College on September 14, 1829, following John William Beschter's brief leadership of the school. Several months before, Peter Kenney had been appointed apostolic visitor to the Jesuit mission in Maryland, and oversaw Mulledy, who was viewed cautiously by the Jesuit superiors in Europe for his ardent republicanism; at the same time, Mulledy was made a consultor to Kenney. When he assumed the presidency, the state of Georgetown was poor; the number of students had dropped to only 45. By 1834, this had rebounded to 140. During his presidency, the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum was more fully implemented, primarily under the direction of the prefect of studies, George Fenwick. In May 1830, the first observation in the United States of the Month of Mary was undertaken by Georgetown's chapter of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin, which had been founded in 1808 as the first chapter of the sodality in the United States. With a growth in the number of books owned by the university under Mulledy's presidency, he undertook to organize the 12,000 volumes in a single library room in Old North on February 16, 1831. Mulledy had a reputation for being relatively lax in enforcing discipline. In 1833, a rebellion was staged by a group of several students who plotted to ambush and assault the prefect of studies, in response to the prefect's reporting of a student who imbibed to the point of intoxication at taverns when the class took a trip to the Capitol. The plot was thwarted, and Mulledy expelled several of the students. In March 1833, Pope Gregory XVI chartered Georgetown College as an ecclesiastical university, the first such institution in the United States. This authorized it to grant canonical degrees in philosophy and theology. The college narrowly escaped destruction on December 10, 1836, when a carpenter's shed near the Walks caught fire. The students and faculty worked to contain the flames and prevented their spread to the nearby dormitory. During Mulledy's tenure, Georgetown was frequently visited by congressmen and senators. On the whole, he was viewed as having effectively managed the college. Kenney reported back to Rome that Mulledy had been a successful administrator despite his "extremely impetuous enthusiasm and excessive patriotism." His first presidency of Georgetown ended in 1837, and he was succeeded by William McSherry. #### Building campaign With the steady increase in the number of students during his presidency, and an influx of money as remuneration from a widow who entered the Georgetown Visitation Monastery and entrusted her son as a ward of Georgetown, Mulledy was able to construct a new infirmary building in 1831. This building was named Gervase Hall, after Brother Thomas Gervase, a missionary who sailed to Maryland aboard the voyage of The Ark and The Dove in 1634. Notwithstanding the misgivings of the Jesuit province's treasurer, Francis Dzierozynski, about Mulledy's penchant for building despite the province's precarious finances, Mulledy undertook an even larger project the following year. He was initially unable to fund a new building that would house a refectory, chapel, study hall, and dormitories; eventually, a Jesuit who owned property because he had not yet taken final vows offered Mulledy a substantial loan. With this money, groundbreaking on the new building occurred in July 1832 and was completed by July of the following year. This building became known as Mulledy Hall. Erection of these two buildings was enabled by a loan of $7,000 from the widow of Stephen Decatur. During Mulledy's presidency, "the Walks", a network of scenic paths through the backwoods of the campus, were created. They were the result of Joseph West, a Jesuit brother's, purchase of the land for the college. Following Congress' donation of land to Columbian College in 1832, Georgetown requested similar benefits. The legislature eventually awarded Georgetown lots worth $25,000, (\~$ in ) the titles to which were transferred to the college on February 20, 1837. ### Second presidency Mulledy again took up the presidency of Georgetown on September 6, 1845, following his brother Samuel Mulledy. Soon thereafter, President James K. Polk requested that the Catholic Church send chaplains to minister to Catholic soldiers in the Mexican–American War; as a result, Mulledy's vice president and procurator left for the Rio Grande to minister to General Zachary Taylor's army. In 1848, due to popular uprisings in the Italian states, many Jesuits fled Italy and took refuge for a time at Georgetown College, including the future famed astronomer Angelo Secchi and scientist Giambattista Pianciani. That same year, Mulledy resigned as president of the college, and was succeeded by James Ryder. ## Maryland provincial In October 1837, Mulledy was appointed the provincial superior of the Maryland Province of the Jesuits. He succeeded William McSherry, the province's first provincial, who in turn succeeded Mulledy as president of Georgetown College. His leadership of the province proved dissatisfactory to the European Jesuits in the United States who took issue with Mulledy's laxity in discipline, including failing to enforce sacred silence and permitting overindulgence of alcohol and visitation of female guests in the Jesuits' quarters. This eventually led to intervention by the Superior General in Rome, who ordered Mulledy to remedy these lapses in discipline. In 1838, Bishop Benedict Joseph Fenwick appointed Mulledy vicar general of the Diocese of Boston, which he held simultaneously as provincial superior. He was considered by Bishop John Dubois as one of the potential choices for coadjutor bishop for the Diocese of New York, but ultimately John Hughes was selected over him in 1838. ### Slave sale Mulledy's building program left Georgetown College—and, by extension, the Maryland Jesuits—with considerable debt. Compounding the financial insecurity was that the Maryland Jesuits' plantations had been mismanaged and were not generating sufficient income to support the college. To rectify the province's finances, Mulledy, as provincial, sold nearly all the slaves owned by the Jesuit Maryland Province to two planters in Louisiana. This plan had been authorized by the Jesuit Superior General in Rome, Jan Roothaan, in late 1838 on the condition that the slave families not be separated and that they be sold to owners who would allow them to continue in their Catholic faith. Mulledy executed the sale of 272 slaves to Jesse Batey and Henry Johnson on June 19, 1838. Despite Roothaan's order, it soon became evident that families were, indeed, separated. This sale provoked outcry among many of the province's Jesuits, who were opposed to slaveholding by the Jesuits and supported manumission of the slaves. These Jesuits sent graphic accounts of the sale to Roothaan, who was inclined toward removing Mulledy as provincial superior. William McSherry convinced Roothaan to delay his decision and, along with Samuel Eccleston (the Archbishop of Baltimore), tried to persuade Mulledy to step down. Roothaan even contemplated expelling Mulledy from the Society of Jesus, but was persuaded otherwise by Eccleston. By August 1839, Roothaan ordered McSherry to inform Mulledy that he had been removed, for the twofold reasons of disobeying orders and of promoting scandal. By the time Roothaan came to this decision, McSherry had already convinced Mulledy to step down in late June and to go to Rome to explain himself to the church authorities. Mulledy resigned the day he received Roothaan's letter. McSherry was made the acting provincial, and was later elected provincial despite being severely ill and near death. Following Mulledy's meeting with Roothaan in Rome, he was assigned to teach English to young boys in Nice in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, effectively as censure for his conduct in the slave sale affair. During his exile, Mulledy wrote to Roothaan of his feelings of loneliness and sense of being forgotten. Mulledy became an alcoholic, and later tried to break this habit with a year of abstinence. With the intensity of the controversy waning, in the winter of 1841 and 1842, the province petitioned Roothaan to allow Mulledy to return to the United States. Roothaan was particularly persuaded by Bishop Eccleston's request for Mulledy's return. Granting the request, Roothaan sent Mulledy to the Diocese of Boston, so as to keep him away from Maryland, where the scandal had taken place. ## College of the Holy Cross Bishop Benedict Joseph Fenwick of Boston established the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1843. Following Roothaan's permission for Mulledy to leave Europe, Fenwick requested that Mulledy be appointed the first president of the college in 1843. Mulledy accepted this position and first arrived at Worcester on March 13, 1843. He oversaw the construction of the school's first building, whose cornerstone was laid on June 21, 1843. Originally known as the college building, it was later named Fenwick Hall, and was entirely destroyed by fire in 1852. Regularly inspecting progress on the building's initial construction, he eventually moved to Worcester permanently on September 28, 1843. He first lived in a farmhouse at the foot of the hill on which the college was built, along with a Jesuit candidate and a Jesuit brother. The college building was completed on January 13, 1844. Relations between Mulledy and Fenwick were strained by the fact that Mulledy wished to have independence in deciding to accept candidates for the Jesuit novitiate. Mulledy eventually prevailed on this matter. Moreover, within three months of the college's opening, Mulledy received directions from Fenwick to significantly curtail the college's expenses, admonishing him to exercise greater frugality. He was unable to offset operating costs with tuition fees and other income. In light of steadily increasing enrollment and accompanying overcrowding, the college was greatly aided by a donation of $1,000 (\~$ in ) from Andrew Carney in March 1844. Given Mulledy's worsening relationship with Fenwick, his presidency came to an end in 1845, and he returned to Georgetown; he was succeeded by James Ryder. ## Later years ### St. John's Literary Institution Mulledy was elected the procurator of the Maryland province in 1847 at the province's general congregation, following heated clashes between himself and his fellow Jesuits, including James Ryder. A Belgian Jesuit, Peter Verhaegen, wrote to Roothaan that Mulledy had been "imperious and despotic," and severely condemned his hostile temperament and breach of fraternity. The new provincial superior, Ignatius Brocard, transferred Mulledy to Philadelphia, where he continued as procurator, before being sent to Frederick, Maryland in 1850 as president of St. John's Literary Institution, succeeding Charles H. Stonestreet. The president of the school also served as the pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church. Mulledy advocated for an English-only curriculum, rather than teaching classes in Latin, so as to not drive away students into Protestant schools that taught in English. During his tenure, Mulledy enforced very strict discipline, prompting a mass walk-out of the older students in the school. In response, he expelled a majority of them, reducing the once-regional student body to one solely from the city of Frederick. This sent the school into a decline from which it never recovered. Upon the end of his term, Mulledy was succeeded by Burchard Villiger. He then was assigned to Alexandria, Virginia for a short while on a pastoral mission. ### Ministry In the fall of 1854, Mulledy was again sent to the College of the Holy Cross, where he was made the prefect of studies and spiritual prefect. He remained in this position until 1857. When asked to teach Latin and Ancient Greek, he declined on the grounds that his competence in the subjects had diminished with age. Instead, Mulledy much preferred to deliver sermons, of which he compiled a file. With the rise of the Know Nothing movement across the United States, and the 1854 victory of the party in winning control of the Massachusetts General Court, a Joint Special Committee on the Inspection of Nunneries and Convents was formed to investigate Catholic institutions. A rumor began circulating in July of that year that Holy Cross was being used as a weapons depot for an eventual Catholic revolution. Consequently, the committee arrived in March to investigate the college, and was escorted around the premises by Mulledy. Upon finding no truth to the rumor, they left. Mulledy once again returned to Washington in 1857, where he served as pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown until 1858. He then went again to Philadelphia for two years, the latter of which he spent as superior at Saint Joseph's College. Mulledy died of "dropsy" on July 20, 1860, at Georgetown College. He was buried in the Jesuit Community Cemetery on Georgetown's campus. ## Legacy In 2015, controversy arose at Georgetown University over the name of Mulledy Hall due to its namesake's connection with slavery. This resulted in the building being temporarily renamed Freedom Hall. In 2017, the president of the university, John DeGioia, announced that the hall would be permanently renamed Isaac Hawkins Hall, taking the first name listed on the register of slaves sold in 1838. In similar fashion, Mulledy Hall at the College of the Holy Cross, which opened in 1966, was renamed Brooks–Mulledy Hall in 2016. The intent of this dual name was to retain its recognition of Mulledy as a founder of the college, while simultaneously recognizing John E. Brooks, who worked to racially integrate the campus of Holy Cross in 1968 and who later was its president. However, in 2020, the college removed Mulledy's name from the building and it became Brooks Hall.

Felice Beato

Italian-British photographer (1832–1909)

Felice Beato (c. 1832 – 29 January 1909), also known as Felix Beato, was an Italian–British photographer. He was one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. He is noted for his genre works, portraits, and views and panoramas of the architecture and landscapes of Asia and the Mediterranean region. Beato's travels gave him the opportunity to create images of countries, people, and events that were unfamiliar and remote to most people in Europe and North America. His work provides images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War, and represents the first substantial body of photojournalism. He influenced other photographers, and his influence in Japan, where he taught and worked with numerous other photographers and artists, was particularly deep and lasting. ## Early life and identity A death certificate discovered in 2009 states that Beato was born in Venice in 1832 and shows that he died on 29 January 1909 in Florence. The death certificate also indicates that he was a British subject and a bachelor. It is likely that early in his life Beato and his family moved to Corfu, at the time part of the British protectorate of the Ionian Islands, and so Beato was a British subject. Because of the existence of a number of photographs signed "Felice Antonio Beato" and "Felice A. Beato", it was long assumed that there was one photographer who somehow photographed at the same time in places as distant as Egypt and Japan. In 1983 it was shown by Chantal Edel that "Felice Antonio Beato" represented two brothers, Felice Beato and Antonio Beato, who sometimes worked together, sharing a signature. The confusion arising from the signatures continues to cause problems in identifying which of the two photographers was the creator of a given image. ## Mediterranean, the Crimea and India Little is certain about Felice Beato's early development as a photographer, though it is said that he bought his first and only lens in Paris in 1851. He probably met the British photographer James Robertson in Malta in 1850 and accompanied him to Constantinople in 1851. James Robertson became his brother-in-law in 1855. Superintendent of the Imperial Mint, Robertson opened one of the first commercial photography studios in the capital between 1854 and 1856. Robertson had been an engraver at the Imperial Ottoman Mint since 1843 and had probably taken up photography in the 1840s. In 1853 the two began photographing together and they formed a partnership called "Robertson & Beato" either in that year or in 1854 when Robertson opened a photographic studio in Pera, Constantinople. Robertson and Beato were joined by Beato's brother Antonio on photographic expeditions to Malta in 1854 or 1856 and to Greece and Jerusalem in 1857. A number of the firm's photographs produced in the 1850s are signed "Robertson, Beato and Co.", and it is believed that the "and Co." refers to Antonio. In late 1854 or early 1855, James Robertson married Beato's sister, Leonilda Maria Matilda Beato. They had three daughters, Catherine Grace (b. 1856), Edith Marcon Vergence (b. 1859), and Helen Beatruc (b. 1861). In 1855 Felice Beato and Robertson travelled to Balaklava, Crimea, where they took over reportage of the Crimean War following Roger Fenton's departure. Beato was ostensibly Robertson's assistant, however, the unpredictable conditions of a war zone forced Beato to assume a more active role. In contrast to Fenton's depiction of the dignified aspects of war, Beato and Robertson showed the destruction and death. They photographed the fall of Sevastopol in September 1855, producing about 60 images. Their Crimean images dramatically changed the way that war was reported and depicted. In February 1858 Beato arrived in Calcutta and began travelling throughout Northern India to document the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. During this time he produced possibly the first-ever photographic images of corpses. It is believed that for at least one of his photographs taken at the palace of Sikandar Bagh in Lucknow, he had the skeletal remains of Indian rebels disinterred or rearranged to heighten the photograph's dramatic impact (see events at Taku Forts). He was also in the cities of Delhi, Cawnpore, Meerut, Benares, Amritsar, Agra, Simla, and Lahore. Beato was joined in July 1858 by his brother Antonio, who later left India, probably for health reasons, in December 1859. Antonio ended up in Egypt in 1860, setting up a photographic studio in Thebes in 1862. ## China In 1860 Beato left the partnership of Robertson & Beato, though Robertson retained use of the name until 1867. Beato was sent from India to photograph the Anglo-French military expedition to China in the Second Opium War. He arrived in Hong Kong in March and immediately began photographing the city and its surroundings as far as Canton. Beato's photographs are some of the earliest taken in China. While in Hong Kong, Beato met Charles Wirgman, an artist and correspondent for the Illustrated London News. The two accompanied the Anglo-French forces travelling north to Talien Bay, then to Pehtang and the Taku Forts at the mouth of the Peiho, and on to Peking and Qingyi Yuan, the suburban Summer Palace. For places on this route and later in Japan, Wirgman's (and others') illustrations for the Illustrated London News were often derived from Beato's photographs. ### Taku Forts Beato's photographs of the Second Opium War are the first to document a military campaign as it unfolded, doing so through a sequence of dated and related images. His photographs of the Taku Forts represent this approach on a reduced scale, forming a narrative recreation of the battle. The sequence of images shows the approach to the forts, the effects of bombardments on the exterior walls and fortifications, and finally the devastation within the forts, including the bodies of dead Chinese soldiers. The photographs were not taken in this order, as the photographs of dead Chinese had to be taken first—before the bodies were removed; only then was Beato free to take the other views of the exterior and interior of the forts. Dr. David F. Rennie, a member of the expedition, noted in his campaign memoir, "I walked round the ramparts on the west side. They were thickly strewn with the dead, in the northwest angle, thirteen were lying in one group around a gun. Signor Beato was here in great excitement, characterising the group as 'beautiful,' and begging that it might not be interfered with until perpetuated by his photographic apparatus, which was done a few minutes afterwards." ### Summer Palace Just outside Peking, Beato took photographs at Qingyi Yuan (now Yihe Yuan, the Summer Palace), a private estate of the Emperor of China comprising palace pavilions, temples, a large artificial lake, and gardens. Some of these photographs, taken between 6 and 18 October 1860, are unique images of buildings that were plundered and looted by the Anglo-French forces beginning on 6 October. On 18 and 19 October, the buildings were torched by the British First Division on the orders of Lord Elgin as a reprisal against the emperor for the torture and deaths of twenty members of an Allied diplomatic party. Bennett writes that "These [photographs] appear to be the earliest images of Peking so far discovered, and are of the utmost historical and cultural importance." Among the last photographs that Beato took in China at this time were portraits of Lord Elgin, in Peking to sign the Convention of Peking, and Prince Kung, who signed on behalf of the Xianfeng Emperor. Beato returned to England in October 1861, and during that winter he sold 400 of his photographs of India and China to Henry Hering, a London commercial portrait photographer. ## Japan By 1863 Beato had moved to Yokohama, Japan, joining Charles Wirgman, with whom he had travelled from Bombay to Hong Kong. The two formed and maintained a partnership called "Beato & Wirgman, Artists and Photographers" during the years 1864–1867, one of the earliest and most important commercial studios in Japan. Wirgman again produced illustrations derived from Beato's photographs, while Beato photographed some of Wirgman's sketches and other works. (Beato's photographs were also used for engravings within Aimé Humbert's Le Japon illustré and other works.) Beato's Japanese photographs include portraits, genre works, landscapes, cityscapes, and a series of photographs documenting the scenery and sites along the Tōkaidō Road, the latter series recalling the ukiyo-e of Hiroshige and Hokusai. During this period, foreign access to (and within) the country was greatly restricted by the Tokugawa shogunate. Accompanying ambassadorial delegations and taking any other opportunities created by his personal popularity and close relationship with the British military, Beato reached areas of Japan where few westerners had ventured, and in addition to conventionally pleasing subjects sought sensational and macabre subject matter such as heads on display after decapitation. His images are remarkable not only for their quality but also for their rarity as photographic views of Edo period Japan. The greater part of Beato's work in Japan contrasted strongly with his earlier work in India and China, which "had underlined and even celebrated conflict and the triumph of British imperial might". Aside from the Portrait of Prince Kung, any appearances of Chinese people in Beato's earlier work had been peripheral (minor, blurred, or both) or as corpses. With the exception of his work in September 1864 as an official photographer on the British military expedition to Shimonoseki, Beato was eager to portray Japanese people, and did so uncondescendingly, even showing them as defiant in the face of the elevated status of westerners.Beato was very active while in Japan. In 1865 he produced a number of dated views of Nagasaki and its surroundings. From 1866 he was often caricatured in Japan Punch, which was founded and edited by Wirgman. In an October 1866 fire that destroyed much of Yokohama, Beato lost his studio and many, perhaps all, of his negatives. While Beato was the first photographer in Japan to sell albums of his works, he quickly recognised their full commercial potential. By around 1870 their sale had become the mainstay of his business. Although the customer would select the content of earlier albums, Beato moved towards albums of his own selection. It was probably Beato who introduced to photography in Japan the double concept of views and costumes/manners, an approach common in photography of the Mediterranean. By 1868 Beato had readied two volumes of photographs, "Native Types", containing 100 portraits and genre works, and "Views of Japan", containing 98 landscapes and cityscapes. Many of the photographs in Beato's albums were hand-coloured, a technique that in his studio successfully applied the refined skills of Japanese watercolourists and woodblock printmakers to European photography. From about the time of the ending of his partnership with Wirgman in 1869, Beato attempted to retire from the work of a photographer, instead, attempting other ventures and delegating photographic work to others within his own studio in Yokohama, "F. Beato & Co., Photographers", which he ran with an assistant named H. Woollett and four Japanese photographers and four Japanese artists. Kusakabe Kimbei was probably one of Beato's artist-assistants before becoming a photographer in his own right. These other ventures failed, but Beato's photographic skills and personal popularity ensured that he could successfully return to work as a photographer. Beato photographed with Ueno Hikoma, and possibly taught photography to Raimund von Stillfried. In 1871 Beato served as official photographer with the United States naval expedition of Admiral Rodgers to Korea. Although it is possible that an unidentified Frenchman photographed Korea during the 1866 invasion of Ganghwa Island, Beato's photographs are the earliest of Korea whose provenance is clear. Beato's business ventures in Japan were numerous. He owned land and several studios, was a property consultant, had a financial interest in the Grand Hotel of Yokohama, and was a dealer in imported carpets and women's bags, among other things. He also appeared in court on several occasions, variously as plaintiff, defendant, and witness. On 6 August 1873 Beato was appointed Consul General for Greece in Japan. In 1877 Beato sold most of his stock to the firm Stillfried & Andersen, who then moved into his studio. In turn, Stillfried & Andersen sold the stock to Adolfo Farsari in 1885. Following the sale to Stillfried & Andersen, Beato apparently retired for some years from photography, concentrating on his parallel career as a financial speculator and trader. On 29 November 1884 he left Japan, ultimately landing in Port Said, Egypt. It was reported in a Japanese newspaper that he had lost all his money on the Yokohama silver exchange. ## Burma and later years From 1884 to 1885 Beato was nominated as the official photographer of the Nile Expedition led by Baron (later Viscount) G.J. Wolseley to Khartoum, Sudan, in relief of General Charles Gordon. Arriving in April 1885, however, he had missed the unsuccessful relief mission by three months and had to turn his attention to documenting the withdrawal of Wolseley's troops to the coastal town of Suakin. Briefly back in England in 1886, Beato lectured the London and Provincial Photographic Society on photographic techniques. He arrived in Burma probably in December 1886, after Upper Burma had been annexed by the British in late 1885. Much publicity had been made in the British press about the three Anglo-Burmese Wars, which had started in 1825 and culminated in December 1885 with the fall of Mandalay and the capture of King Thibaw Min. Beato, who had covered military operations in India and China, was probably attracted by the news of the annexation. While he arrived in Burma after the main military operations ended, he would still get to see more of the action, as the annexation by the British led to an insurgency which lasted for the following decade. This allowed Beato to take a number of pictures of the British military in operations or at the Royal Palace, Mandalay, as well as insurgency soldiers and prisoners. Beato set up a photographic studio in Mandalay and, in 1894, a curiosa and antiques dealership, running both businesses separately and, according to records at the time, very successfully. His past experience and the credibility derived from his time in Japan brought him a large clientele of opulent locals, posing in traditional attire for official portraits. Other images, from Buddhas to landscapes and buildings, were sold from master albums in Burma and Europe. In 1896, Trench Gascoigne published some of Beato's images in Among Pagodas and Fair Ladies and, the following year, Mrs Ernest Hart's Picturesque Burma included more, while George W. Bird in his Wanderings in Burma not only presented thirty-five credited photographs but published a long description of Beato's businesses and recommended visitors to come by his shop. By that time, Beato's photographs had come to represent the very image of Burma to the rest of the world, which it would remain for decades to come. As his curios business developed, with branches in Rangoon, Mandalay but also in Colombo and London, he also acquired the Photographic Art Gallery in Mandalay in 1903, another photographic studio. In his old age, Beato had become an important business party in Colonial Burma, involved in many enterprises from electric works to life insurance and mining. ## Death and legacy Although Beato was previously believed to have died in Rangoon or Mandalay in 1905 or 1906, his death certificate, discovered in 2009, indicates that he died on 29 January 1909 in Florence, Italy. Whether acknowledged as his own work, sold as Stillfried & Andersen's, or encountered as anonymous engravings, Beato's work had a major impact: > For over fifty years into the early twentieth century, Beato's photographs of Asia constituted the standard imagery of travel diaries, illustrated newspapers, and other published accounts, and thus helped shape "Western" notions of several Asian societies. ## Photographic techniques Photographs of the 19th century often now show the limitations of the technology used, yet Beato managed to successfully work within and even transcend those limitations. He predominantly produced albumen silver prints from wet collodion glass-plate negatives. Beato pioneered and refined the techniques of hand-colouring photographs and making panoramas. He may have started hand-colouring photographs at the suggestion of Wirgman, or he may have seen the hand-coloured photographs made by partners Charles Parker and William Parke Andrew. Whatever the inspiration, Beato's coloured landscapes are delicate and naturalistic and his coloured portraits, more strongly coloured than the landscapes, are appraised as excellent. As well as providing views in colour, Beato worked to represent very large subjects in a way that gave a sense of their vastness. Throughout his career, Beato's work is marked by spectacular panoramas, which he produced by carefully making several contiguous exposures of a scene and then joining the resulting prints together, thereby re-creating the expansive view. The complete version of his panorama of Pehtang comprises seven photographs joined almost seamlessly for a total length of more than 2 metres (6 1/2 ft). ## See also - History of photography 1850-1900 - Felice...Felice..., a 1998 Dutch drama loosely based on Beato's time in Japan - Sakoku - List of Westerners who visited Japan before 1868 - Felice A. Beato - Baron Raimund von Stillfried - John McCosh, 19th-century photographer in Burma - Philip Adolphe Klier, 19th-century photographer in Burma - List of Orientalist artists - Orientalism

Bramshill House

Grade I listed English country house in Hart, United Kingdom

Bramshill House, in Bramshill, northeast Hampshire, England, is one of the largest and most important Jacobean prodigy house mansions in England. It was built in the early 17th century by the 11th Baron Zouche of Harringworth but was partly destroyed by fire a few years later. The design shows the influence of the Italian Renaissance, which became popular in England during the late 16th century. The house was designated a Grade I listed building in 1952. The mansion's southern façade is notable for its decorative architecture, which includes at its centre a large oriel window above the principal entrance. Interior features include a great hall displaying 92 coats of arms on a Jacobean screen, an ornate drawing room, and a 126.5-foot-long (38.6 m) gallery. Numerous columns and friezes are found throughout the mansion, while several rooms have large tapestries depicting historical figures and events on their panelled walls. The house is set in 262 acres (106 ha) of grounds containing an 18-acre (7.3 ha) lake. The grounds, which received a Grade II\* listing in 1984, are part of a Registered Historic Park that includes about 25 acres (10 ha) of early 17th-century formal gardens near the house. The wider medieval park was landscaped from the 17th to the 20th century and contains woodland. Bramshill appears to have been a local sporting and social venue since the 16th century. The cricket ground at the house played host to a first-class match in 1823 when an early Hampshire team played an England XI, and it hosted three other matches in 1825–26. During the Second World War, the mansion was used as a Red Cross maternity home, before becoming the residence of the exiled King Michael and Queen Anne of Romania for a number of years. It became the location of the Police Staff College in 1960, and was later home to the European Police College. As a result, many campus buildings have been added to the estate. Owing to escalating maintenance costs the property was sold to the heritage property developers City & Country in August 2014. Among the 14 ghosts reputed to haunt the house is that of a bride who accidentally locked herself in a chest on her wedding night and was not found until 50 years later. ## Location Bramshill House is at the approximate centre of a triangle formed by Reading, Basingstoke and Farnborough, about 47 miles (76 km) by road southwest of central London. It lies to the northeast of Hartley Wintney, east of Hazeley off the B3349 road, southeast of the village of Bramshill, which lies on the B3011 road. Three main lanes approach the property: Mansion Drive from the B3011 in the southwest, Reading Drive South from the B3011 to the east of Bramshill village from the north, and the shorter Pheasantry Drive which approaches it from the southeast from Chalwin's Copse, just north of the course of the River Hart. Within the grounds is a private lane, Lower Pool Road, which connects Mansion Drive to Reading Drive South, passing the pond and several outer buildings. The latitudinal and longitudinal location is 51°19'57.9"N 0°54'43.2"W or also, 51.332759, −0.911991. ## History ### Original house The 1086 Domesday Book lists one of the two manors of Bromeselle (the Anglo-Norman spelling of Bromshyll) as held by Hugh de Port. In the early 14th century, Sir John Foxley (c. 1270 – c. 1325), Baron of the Exchequer, built and endowed a chapel in the village of Bramshill. His first wife, Constance de Bramshill, may have been the heiress of the Bramshill family. Their son, Thomas Foxley (c. 1305–1360), became MP for Berkshire in 1325, and was appointed constable of Windsor Castle in 1328, soon after the accession of the 14-year-old Edward III. In 1347 he obtained a licence to build a manor house or small castle at Bramshill, which included a 2,500-acre (1,000 ha) wooded park. The house, built between 1351 and 1360, had thick walls, vaulted cellars, and an internal courtyard measuring 100 by 80 feet (30 by 24 m). Based on the similarity of the surviving vaults under Bramshill House and those under what became the servants' hall and steward's room at Windsor Castle, it may have been a copy of William of Wykeham's work there. The estate remained in the hands of the Foxley family and their heirs, the Essex family, until 1499, when it was sold to Giles Daubeney, 1st Baron Daubeney. Giles's son Henry Daubeney (later Earl of Bridgewater) sold the property to Henry VIII, and in 1547 Edward VI granted the estate to William Paulet, whose heirs sold it in 1600 to Sir Stephen Thornhurst of Agnes Court, Kent. ### New manor house In March 1605, Edward la Zouche, 11th Baron Zouche, a favourite of James I, bought the property from Thornhurst. A house was earlier planned on the site for Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales (1594–1612), whose heraldic feathers are displayed above the central pediment. Lord Zouche demolished a large part of the building and began to build the Bramshill House of today. Henry Shaw describes the new house which Zouche built as a "specimen of Elizabethan [sic] architecture [which] merits particular attention, exhibiting all the stateliness for which the period referred to was remarkable, with a suite of apartments both large and lofty. The amplitude of its dimensions indicate a princely residence." An inventory taken in 1634 after Zouche's death listed the library as having 250 books and a collection of mathematical instruments, and revealed that the maids' chamber was of a very high standard. James Zouch, grandson of Edward la Zouche, sold the property to the Earl of Antrim in 1637, at which time the house's furniture was valued at £2,762. During the reign of Charles I, the house was partly destroyed by a fire. On 25 June 1640, Lord Antrim sold Bramshill for £9,500 to Sir Robert Henley. In 1673 it was the property of his son, Sir Andrew Henley, 1st Baronet. Sir John Cope purchased the property in 1699, and his descendants occupied the premises until 1935. The Cope family shortened the wings on the south side in 1703, converted most of the chapel to a drawing room and introduced a mezzanine on the west side during the 18th century. They were responsible for much of the interior, with significant renovation work done in the 19th century and in 1920. After his victory over Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington was offered his choice of house by Parliament; he visited Bramshill but in 1817 chose Stratfield Saye instead. ### Sporting events Numerous paintings and prints depict games and social events taking place on the lawn; one such painting by Joseph Nash, now in the National Fencing Museum, depicts 17th-century rapier practice, with a number of upper-class men, women and children as spectators. The cricket ground at the house first played host to a first-class match in 1823 when an early Hampshire team played an England XI. Hampshire won by five wickets. Two further first-class matches were played there in 1825, when Hampshire drew against Godalming and defeated Sussex. A final first-class match was held there in 1826 when a combined Hampshire and Surrey team played and lost to Sussex. ### Modern times In 1935, the house was purchased from the Cope family by Ronald Nall-Cain, 2nd Baron Brocket, the house's last private owner. It was used by the Red Cross as a maternity home during the Second World War, after which it became the home of the exiled King Michael and Queen Anne of Romania for several years." Bramshill House became a Grade I listed building on 8 July 1952, and was acquired by the British government the following year as a dedicated site for police training. It became the location of the National Police College in 1960. From 2005, two buildings on the site housed the European Police College (CEPOL) until this was moved to Budapest in 2014. By the late 1980s the estate had become expensive to maintain, and according to John Wheeler, Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, by 1989 it was "in a poor state of repair". In July 2013 the Home Office placed the house and estate on the market for £25 million. It was sold to the heritage property developers City & Country in August 2014. In 2018, the house, with a reduced estate of about 90 acres, was put back on the market with a guide price of £10 million. ## Architecture ### Exterior The 15-bedroom 56,974 square feet (5,293.1 m²) Bramshill House is one of the largest and most important Jacobean mansions in England, described as one of the "glories of English architecture" by the historians Anthony Blunt and James Lees-Milne. The architecture of the three-storey building was inspired by the Italian Renaissance, and was executed mainly by German builders. It is approximately 140 feet (43 m) in length. The design is traditionally attributed to the architect John Thorpe, although no records remain to confirm the attribution. Surviving records do show that the stone mason Richard Goodridge was working at Bramshill in 1617 and again in 1621 and the authors of the revised Hampshire volume of Pevsner's Buildings of England suggest him as a possible alternative designer. The building stands on the edge of a plateau, overlooking the park to the south. The plan of the house is unusual, partly because of its incorporation of the earlier building; it extends at right angles to the primary (southern) façade. The elevations are symmetrical, facing outwards, but the interior court is narrow, and projecting wings lie at either end of the eastern and western sides. Bramshill House is three storeys high on the southern main entrance side and two storeys high to the north and east. There are three vaulted cellars to the west. The house is built of red brick laid in English bond dressed with stone, with ashlar quoining at the corners of the wings. Stone dressings are featured on numerous large mullion windows. An open carved parapet surmounts the building. The roof consists of red tiles, and there are large gables on the west side. The chimney stacks are rectangular. #### North and south The north façade has three bays separated by windows and features a loggia, typical of early 17th-century houses, with a central arched entrance to accommodate coaches. The central bay is crowned by an ornamental pierced parapet below a niched Dutch gable, which shelters a small statue of Lord Zouche or James I. There are small obelisks at either side of the gable. Thorpe originally intended the main entrance of the house to be on this side, building on the gatehouse of the earlier Foxley house. The southern façade was described by Nikolaus Pevsner as "among the most fanciful pieces of Jacobean design in [England]". It is three storeys high and features three sets of three bays in either wing, with five inner sections. The outer two of the inner sections feature eight angular windows, aligned in rows of four on the first two floors and then a row of four windows on the top floor. The inner two sections have the same layout on the first and top floors with eight windows aligned in rows of four on the first floor and four windows on the top floor, but the ground floor features two arches, which form part of the central loggia. The stone central bay, 20 feet (6.1 m) wide, is emphasised by superimposed double decorated pilasters on all floors and the central archway of the loggia in the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders, surmounted by a florid perforated pediment. In addition there is an oriel window on the first floor above the main entrance. An important difference from the other sides of this building is a terrace, 25 feet (7.6 m) in width, between the projecting wings, a kind of architectural foreground to the garden. The terrace is bounded by a 3-foot-3-inch-high (0.99 m) balustrade. The arcade on the terrace of the southern front is a good example of Italian domestic architecture, used in villas. The triglyphs and ornamented metopes, together with the simple capitals of the columns, indicate the Doric order, but are light enough to be Ionic. The south entrance was the model for Darlington, the Crocker-McMillin Mansion in New Jersey, US, built between 1901 and 1907. #### East and west The east façade is the longest, about 124 feet (38 m) wide, and two storeys high. It features four full-height angular bays with two windows between, while its upper walls have two arches set within a rectangular panel. On this side there is a Troco Terrace with a lawn, as well as two arcaded openings at the side on either wing of the house. The southernmost arcaded opening contains a bench with eight arches and has three tables, one of which is older and octagonal. Carved in the wall at the side is a frieze consisting of four squares, each depicting an animal: a lion, an elephant, a wild boar and a camel. The west façade dates to the 18th century and is the only one with multiple gables; the windows on the ground floor are sashed. ### Interior Two of the rooms have large tapestries on their walls depicting historical figures and scenes. Those in the drawing room contain scenes from Roman history and were based on designs by Peter Paul Rubens, who supervised the work in Brussels. These tapestries were initially made for Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester, Zouche's brother-diplomat, but in the end he rejected them for another set; how the first set came to Bramshill is not known. Rubens's sketches for the first and last tapestries in the series are in Alte Pinakothek (Munich). The west section of the ground floor contains the former dining room and kitchen. The openings in the wall between the billiard room and the garden room had been blocked up but the rooms were reconnected in the 19th century under Sir William Henry Cope, uncovering an original doorway with a four-centred pointed arch. Cope applied arabesque patterns to the panelling in the garden room, which he had traced when two of the bedrooms were being repainted. The billiard room has a hidden door leading to the original entrance on the north side of the house through the Foxley gatehouse into the interior courtyard, and several doorways remain in the kitchen and housekeeping areas. The Great Hall, to which an arcaded porch gives direct access, retains the basic design of the original construction. It has a dais and a Jacobean stone screen, 13 feet (4.0 m) high, decorated with 92 shields. Resident families emblazoned the shields with the arms of ancestors and family members. The entablature of the screen has a double row of 40 sculptured shields and has a depth of 2 feet 6 inches (0.76 m). Beyond the dais, double doors lead into the Terrace Hall at the foot of the staircase. Across from this is the former dining room, containing a large tapestry, believed to have been made by an English artist, "representing forest scenery in very subdued colours". During the time of the Cope family in the 1880s, the kitchen near the south hall was used as a dairy. The kitchen and the adjoining room had back-to-back fireplaces. #### Drawing room and library The drawing room, containing four bay windows of different sizes, is panelled with oak for its entire height of about 16 feet (4.9 m). One of the upper panels, surmounted by its Corinthian entablature, is a frieze depicting a fig, grape, and pomegranate, each with foliage and blossoms. One of the lower panels, part of the dado in the same room, has a section of projecting mouldings. The upper panel is 2 feet 10 inches by 2 feet 4 inches (.86 m × .71 m); the lower, 2 feet 7 inches by 2 feet 6 inches (.79 m × .76 m). The massive chimneypiece in the drawing room is classically designed, believed to be inspired by one of the great Italian architects of 16th-century Mannerism, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola. It is two storeys in height, the lower being Doric and the upper Ionic. The distribution of the members is regular, and the shafts of the columns are variegated marble. The upper compartment of the chimneypiece is composed of separate pieces of the same diversified material, and the frieze of the upper order also consists of coloured marble in the centre. The fireplace is 6 feet (1.8 m) wide and 4 feet 8 inches (1.42 m) high, and retains the ancient andirons, used for burning wood. These are large and well adorned, particularly in the lower part. The ceilings of the drawing room and library are the most elaborate in the house. The plaster frieze in the library also displays fine workmanship; 1 foot 7 inches (0.48 m) wide, it is designed in a striking arabesque pattern, with an evident Florentine influence. In the 1880s the library had a collection of 5,000 volumes, about half the number the Cope family owned at the time. #### Staircase and first floor The standards and balusters of the stairs on the north side of the hall came from Eversley Manor House and probably date to the mid-17th century, although the treads are original to the house and possibly mid-16th century. The walls above the stairs and on the first-floor landing contain some very large paintings, including several portraits. Beyond the staircase are the state rooms and what was known as the "Wrought Room". The room has an ornamental ceiling with a Renaissance chimneypiece. Two of the bedrooms, the two "White Rooms", were originally connected to what was called the Flower-de-luce Room, but the doors have been boarded up. The Long Gallery fills the first floor of the northern range: 126.5 feet (38.6 m) long and with a richly decorated stucco ceiling and a complex wooden chimneypiece, it formerly contained a "very curious collection of portraits of distinguished characters". Also on the first floor is the "Chapel Drawing Room" in the south wing, connected to the Drawing Room. The Copes created this room by reducing the size of the original chapel, which is entered through it. The current chapel has an altar reredos with paintings of the Virgin Mary, St. Stephen, St. Mary Magdalene and St. John the Evangelist, by Alexander Rowan and dated by Pevsner to about 1840. The tapestry in the chapel room is older than the house, and was assessed by an expert as dating to 1450 or earlier; in the early 19th century it had hung in the Red Drawing Room. When the chapel ceiling was restored by Sir William Cope, it was discovered that one section of the plaster work had previously been replaced with carved wood. The large window in the south wall of the courtyard was presumably moved from the original chapel. ## Grounds and garden The house is set in 262 acres (106 ha) of grounds, which include an 18-acre (7.3 ha) lake north of the house. The grounds form part of a Registered Historic Park that received a Grade II\* listing in 1984; this was subsequently upgraded to Grade I in September 2017. Under this designation are the 25 acres (10 ha) of early 17th-century formal gardens near the house, the wider 490-acre (200 ha) medieval park, landscaped from the 17th to the 20th century, with 250 acres (100 ha) of woodland and buildings including an icehouse and a folly known as Conduit House. Parts of the park have been used for commercial softwood production since the 19th century. To the west of the house is Peatmoor Copse and to the east Bramshill Forest, and the grounds contained what was known as the "Green Court" and the "Flower Garden" at the time of William Henry Cope in the 1880s. The Grade I listed gatehouse dates to the time of the Foxleys. The fir trees in the grounds are reputed to have been planted "as a memento of his former home" by James I, who brought them from Scotland. The formal gardens were first laid out by Edward la Zouche, a horticulturist. Sir John Cope redesigned the gardens and continued the planting of trees in the park. At the close of the 18th century the grounds were re-landscaped to be less formal, and some areas in the south were returned to parkland. Bramshill Park was conceived as a "hunting box" for Henry Frederick and became a popular estate for hunting. On 24 July 1621, while hunting in the park, George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, accidentally shot and killed one of the gamekeepers with his crossbow. An inquiry cleared him of murder. Another notable clergyman/hunter who frequented Bramshill was Charles Kingsley, rector of Eversley, who hunted fox and deer and collected butterflies there and frequently took his family and friends. Kingsley was reportedly especially enamoured of the fir trees, which he considered "a source of constant delight", fondly naming them "James the First's gnarled giants". In the 19th century, Sir John Cope, a friend of Kingsley's, was known as a supporter of the fox hunt and especially as a breeder of fox hounds. The opening of the season at Bramshill in the late 1840s was noted in the British hunting press. The main avenue approaches from the southwest, through an arched gateway formed by two Grade II listed early 19th-century lodges, before crossing the Broad Water formed by the River Hart by a Grade I listed early 19th-century bridge with two arches. There are separate listings for other structures near the house, including the Grade I listed early 17th-century triple-arched gateway on the route to Reading to the northeast of the house, Grade I listed early 17th-century boundary walls and turrets to the south and west, Grade II listed boundary walls and gate-piers to the west, including the kitchen garden, Grade I listed garden walls and gateways to the north and east, and the Grade II listed late 18th-century stable block to the north. ## Legends Bramshill has been cited as one of the most haunted houses in England. According to one UK police officer who worked at the college, 14 ghosts have purportedly been identified, although another officer at the college did not take these suggestions seriously. They include a Grey Lady (one story suggests that her husband, a religious dissenter, was beheaded in the 17th century) and a Green Man (a Cope family member who either drowned in the lake in 1806, according to the journalist P. Lal, or threw himself off a cliff near Brighton, according to the author Penny Legg). The Green Man, dressed as his name suggests, reportedly manifests near the lake, as does the ghost supposed to be that of a gardener who drowned there. The Grey Lady allegedly haunts the terrace, the library, and the chapel. Legg suggests that she has a young and beautiful appearance, with a sad, tear-stained face and golden hair, and smelling of the lilies of the valley; Lal argues that she has reddish-brown hair and wears a grey, sleeveless robe. The Grey Lady's husband has been reported to haunt the stables and the chapel drawing room. The ghost of a young child allegedly haunts the library and the Fleur de Lys room; the child has supposedly been heard crying, and attempts to hold visitors' hands. Folklore holds that the Grey Lady was the child's mother. A lady dressed in the style of Queen Anne, and a knight in armour, are reported to have been seen in the chapel drawing room. The chapel itself is purportedly frequented by the ghost of a lady in 17th-century dress, and by that of a nun. A young man dressed in 1920s tennis garb, reputed to be a Cope family member who fell from a train, has supposedly been seen in the reception area of the house. A small boy documented to haunt the terrace is said to have fallen from the roof sometime in the 18th century. In addition, Bramshill House was cited by the historian William Page as a possible location for the Legend of the Mistletoe Bough, a ghost story associated with several English country mansions. This legend tells of a bride who supposedly hid in a wooden chest during a game of hide and seek on her wedding night. In the case of Bramshill House, the story has it that this happened at Christmas time, and that the bride was found fifty years later still wearing her wedding dress and with a sprig of mistletoe in her hand; the chest is on display in the entrance hall. The woman is sometimes identified as John Cope's daughter Anne, who married Hugh Bethell of Yorkshire. An alternative claim is that she was Genevre Orsini, who was married in 1727, and that her ghost came to Bramshill from Italy together with the chest. In his monograph on the house, the Victorian writer Sir William Cope preferred this theory and added that the chest on display was not the original, which had been proved large enough by "a woman of comely proportions" who had tested it by lying down in it, but which had been taken away by Sir Denzil Cope's widow in 1812. The ghost of the bride is referred to as the White Lady, and she is said by Legg to haunt the Fleur de Lys room. According to Legg, Michael I of Romania asked to be moved to another room during a stay there, in order to not be disturbed by the young woman in white who passed through his bedroom every night. An old man with a grey beard, thought by Legg to be the father or husband of the White Lady, is reported to stare through windows and at the Mistletoe Chest.

Bryce Canyon National Park

National park in Utah, United States

Bryce Canyon National Park (/braɪs/) is a national park of the United States located in southwestern Utah. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rock. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views for park visitors. Bryce Canyon National Park is much smaller and sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park. The rim at Bryce varies from 8,000 to 9,000 feet (2,400 to 2,700 m). The area is in portions of Garfield County and Kane County. The Bryce Canyon area was settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1850s and was named after Ebenezer Bryce, who homesteaded in the area in 1874. The area was originally designated as a national monument by President Warren G. Harding in 1923 and was redesignated as a national park by Congress in 1928. The park covers 35,835 acres (55.992 sq mi; 14,502 ha; 145.02 km²) and receives substantially fewer visitors than Zion National Park (nearly 4.3 million in 2016) or Grand Canyon National Park (almost 6 million in 2016), largely due to Bryce's more remote location. In 2023, Bryce Canyon received 2,461,269. ## Geography The park is located in southwestern Utah about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of and 1,000 feet (300 m) higher than Zion National Park. Bryce Canyon National Park lies within the Colorado Plateau geographic province of North America and straddles the southeastern edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau west of Paunsaugunt Faults (Paunsaugunt is Paiute for "home of the beaver"). Park visitors arrive from the plateau and look over its edge toward a valley containing the fault and the Paria River just beyond it (Paria is Paiute for "muddy or elk water"). The edge of the Kaiparowits Plateau bounds the opposite side of the valley. Bryce Canyon was not formed from erosion initiated from a central stream, meaning it technically is not a canyon. Instead headward erosion excavated large amphitheater-shaped features in the Cenozoic-aged rocks of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. This erosion resulted in delicate and colorful pinnacles called hoodoos that are up to 200 feet (60 m) high. A series of amphitheaters extends more than 20 miles (30 km) north-to-south within the park. The largest is Bryce Amphitheater, which is 12 miles (19 km) long, 3 miles (5 km) wide and 800 feet (240 m) deep. A nearby example of amphitheaters with hoodoos in the same formation but at a higher elevation is in Cedar Breaks National Monument, which is 25 miles (40 km) to the west on the Markagunt Plateau. Rainbow Point, the highest part of the park at 9,105 feet (2,775 m), is at the end of the 18-mile (29 km) scenic drive. From there, Aquarius Plateau, Bryce Amphitheater, the Henry Mountains, the Vermilion Cliffs and the White Cliffs can be seen. Yellow Creek, where it exits the park in the northeast section, is the lowest part of the park at 6,620 feet (2,020 m). ## Climate According to the Köppen climate classification system, the park has a continental climate with warm, dry summers (Dsb). Dsb climates are defined by having their coldest month at a mean temperature below 32 °F (0 °C), all months with a mean temperature below 71.6 °F (22 °C), at least four months with a mean temperature above 50 °F (10 °C), and three times as much precipitation in the wettest winter month compared to the driest summer month. The plant hardiness zone at the visitor center is 5b with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of −10.0 °F (−23.3 °C). The weather in Bryce Canyon is cooler and receives more precipitation than Zion: a total of 15 to 18 inches (380 to 460 mm) per year. Yearly temperatures vary from an average minimum of 9 °F (−13 °C) in January to an average maximum of 83 °F (28 °C) in July, but extreme temperatures can range from −30 to 97 °F (−34 to 36 °C). The record high temperature in the park was 98 °F (37 °C) on July 14, 2002. The record low temperature was −26 °F (−32 °C) on February 6, 1989, and January 13, 1963. ## History ### Native American habitation Little is known about early human habitation in the area. Archaeological surveys of the Paunsaugunt Plateau indicate that people have lived in the area for at least 10,000 years. Basketmaker Anasazi artifacts thousands of years old were found south of the park. Other artifacts from the Pueblo-period Anasazi and the Fremont culture (up to the mid-12th century) were found. The Paiute Native Americans moved into the area around the time that the other cultures left. These Native Americans hunted and gathered for most of their food, while supplementing their diet with cultivated plants. The Paiute in developed a mythology surrounding the hoodoos. They believed that they were the Legend People whom the trickster Coyote turned to stone. One older Paiute said his culture called the hoodoos Anka-ku-was-a-wits, which is Paiute for "red painted faces". ### European American exploration and settlement In the late 18th and early 19th century the first European Americans explored the area. Mormon scouts visited in the 1850s to gauge its potential for agriculture, grazing, and settlement. The first major scientific expedition was led by U.S. Army Major John Wesley Powell in 1872. Powell, along with a team of mapmakers and geologists, surveyed the Sevier and Virgin River area as part of a larger survey of the Colorado Plateaus. His mapmakers used many Paiute place names. Small groups of Mormon pioneers followed and attempted to settle east of Bryce Canyon along the Paria River. In 1873, the Kanarra Cattle Company started to graze cattle there. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent Scottish immigrant Ebenezer Bryce and his wife Mary to settle land in the Paria Valley to apply his carpentry skills. The Bryce family settled right below Bryce Amphitheater—the main collection of hoodoos. Bryce grazed his cattle inside what are now park borders, and reputedly thought that the amphitheaters were a "helluva place to lose a cow." He built a road to the plateau to retrieve firewood and timber, and a canal to irrigate his crops and water his animals. Other settlers soon started to call the unusual place "Bryce's Canyon", and the name stuck. A combination of drought, overgrazing, and flooding eventually drove the remaining Paiutes from the area and prompted the settlers to attempt to build a water diversion channel from the Sevier River drainage. That effort failed, leading most settlers, including the Bryce family, to abandon the area. Bryce moved his family to Arizona in 1880. The remaining settlers dug a 10-mile (16 km) ditch from the Sevier's east fork into Tropic Valley. ### Creation of the park These scenic areas were first described to the public in magazine articles published by Union Pacific and Santa Fe railroads in 1916. Forest Supervisor J. W. Humphrey among others promoted the scenic wonders of Bryce Canyon's amphitheaters, and by 1918 more articles helped to spark interest. However, poor access to the remote area and the lack of accommodations kept visitation to a bare minimum. Ruby Syrett, Harold Bowman, and the Perry brothers later established lodging and "touring services". Syrett later served as the first postmaster. By the early 1920s, the Union Pacific Railroad became interested in expanding rail service into southwestern Utah to accommodate tourists. Conservationists became alarmed by the damage overgrazing, logging, and unregulated visitation was inflicting on the canyon. A movement to protect the area soon started, and National Park Service Director Stephen Mather responded by proposing that Bryce Canyon be made into a state park. The governor of Utah and the Utah State Legislature lobbied for national protection. Mather relented and sent his recommendation to President Warren G. Harding, who on June 8, 1923, established Bryce Canyon National Monument. A road was built the same year on the plateau to provide access to outlooks over the amphitheaters. From 1924 to 1925, Bryce Canyon Lodge was built from local timber and stone. Members of the United States Congress started work in 1924 on upgrading Bryce Canyon's protection status from national monument to national park to establish Utah National Park. A process led by the Utah Parks Company for transferring ownership of private and state-held land to the federal government started in 1923. The last of the land was acquired four years later, and on February 25, 1928, Bryce Canyon National Park was established. In 1931, President Herbert Hoover annexed an adjoining area south of the park, and in 1942 an additional 635 acres (257 ha) was added. This brought the park's total area to the ultimate 35,835 acres (14,502 ha). Rim Road, a scenic drive, was completed in 1934 by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Park administration was conducted from Zion National Park until 1956 when Bryce Canyon's first superintendent started work. ### Later The USS Bryce Canyon, named for the park, served as a supply and repair ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet from September 15, 1950, to June 30, 1981. Bryce Canyon Natural History Association (BCNHA) is a non-profit organization, established in 1961. It runs the bookstore inside the park visitor center and support interpretive, educational, and scientific activities. A portion of the profits from all bookstore sales are donated to public land units. Responding to increased visitation and traffic congestion, NPS implemented a voluntary, summer-only, in-park shuttle system in June 2000. In 2004, reconstruction began on the road system. On April 7, 2020, Bryce Canyon National Park was closed to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, before a phased reopening started on May 6, 2020. ## Geology The Bryce Canyon area experienced soil deposition that spans from the last part of the Cretaceous period and the first half of the Cenozoic era. The ancient depositional environment varied. Dakota Sandstone and Tropic Shale were deposited in the warm, shallow waters of the advancing and retreating Cretaceous Seaway (outcrops of these rocks are found just outside park borders). Other formations were created, but mostly eroded away following two major periods of uplift. The Laramide orogeny affected the entire western part of what would become North America starting about 70 million to 50 MYA. This event helped to build the Rocky Mountains and in the process closed the Cretaceous Seaway. The Straight Cliffs, Wahweap, and Kaiparowits formations were victims of this uplift. The Colorado Plateaus rose 16 MYA and were segmented into plateaus, separated by faults and each having its own uplift rate. This uplift created vertical joints, which over time preferentially eroded. The soft Pink Cliffs of the Claron Formation eroded to form freestanding hoodoo pinnacles in badlands, while the more resistant White Cliffs formed monoliths. The brown, pink, and red colors are from hematite (iron oxide; Fe₂O₃); the yellows from limonite (FeO(OH)·nH₂O); and the purples are from pyrolusite (MnO₂). ## Ecology More than 400 native plant species live in the park. The three life zones in the park are based on elevation: The lowest areas are dominated by dwarf forests of pinyon pine and juniper with manzanita, serviceberry, and antelope bitterbrush in between. Aspen, cottonwood, water birch, and willow grow along streams. Ponderosa pine forests cover the mid-elevations with blue spruce and Douglas fir in water-rich areas and manzanita and bitterbrush as underbrush. Douglas fir and white fir, along with aspen and Engelmann spruce, make up the forests on the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The harshest areas have limber pine and ancient Great Basin bristlecone pine, some more than 1,600 years old. The forests and meadows support diverse animal life including foxes, badgers, porcupines, elk, skunks, black bears, bobcats, and woodpeckers. Mule deer are the most common large mammals. Elk and pronghorn, which have been reintroduced nearby, sometimes appear. The park forms part of the habitat of three wildlife species listed under the Endangered Species Act: the Utah prairie dog, the California condor, and the southwestern willow flycatcher. The Utah prairie dog is a threatened species that was reintroduced to the park. The largest protected population is found in the park. About 170 species of birds visit the park each year, including swifts and swallows. Most species migrate to warmer regions in winter, although jays, ravens, nuthatches, eagles, and owls do not. In winter, the mule deer, cougars, and coyotes migrate to lower elevations. Ground squirrels and marmots pass the winter in hibernation. Eleven species of reptiles and four species of amphibians have been found. Reptiles include the Great Basin rattlesnake, short-horned lizard, side-blotched lizard, striped whipsnake, and amphibians include the tiger salamander. Also in the park are the black, lumpy, very slow-growing colonies of cryptobiotic soil, which are a mix of lichens, algae, fungi, and cyanobacteria. Together these organisms slow erosion, add nitrogen to the soil, and help it to retain moisture. ## Activities Most park visitors travel the scenic drive, which provides access to 13 viewpoints over the amphitheaters. In total, 50 miles (80 km) of trails criss-cross the park. Bryce Canyon has eight marked and maintained day hikes: Easy to moderate hikes - Mossy Cave (one hour, State Route 12 northwest of Tropic) - Rim Trail (5–6 hours, anywhere on the rim) - Bristlecone Loop (one hour, Rainbow Point), and Queens Garden (1–2 hours, Sunrise Point) Moderate hikes - Navajo Loop (1–2 hours, Sunset Point) - Tower Bridge (2–3 hours, north of Sunrise Point) Strenuous hikes - Fairyland Loop (4–5 hours, Fairyland Point) - Peekaboo Loop (3–4 hours, Bryce Point) Several of the trails intersect, allowing hikers to arrange routes for more challenging hikes. The park has two trails designated for overnight trips: the 9-mile (14 km) Riggs Spring Loop Trail and the 23-mile (37 km) Under-the-Rim Trail. Both require a backcountry camping permit. More than 10 miles (16 km) of marked but ungroomed skiing trails are available off of Fairyland, Paria, and Rim trails. Twenty miles (32 km) of connecting groomed ski trails are in nearby Dixie National Forest and Ruby's Inn. The air is so clear that on most days Navajo Mountain and the Kaibab Plateau can be seen 90 miles (140 km) away in Arizona from Yovimpa and Rainbow points. On clear days, the Black Mesas of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico can be seen some 160 miles (260 km) away. The park has a 7.4 magnitude night sky, one of the darkest in North America. Stargazers can, therefore, see 7,500 stars, while in most places fewer than 2,000 can be seen due to light pollution, and in many large cities only a few dozen are visible. Park rangers host public stargazing events and evening programs on astronomy, nocturnal animals, and night sky protection. The Bryce Canyon Astronomy Festival, typically held in June, attracts thousands of visitors. In honor of this festival, Asteroid 49272 was named after the national park. The two campgrounds are North Campground and Sunset Campground. Loop A in North Campground is open year-round. Additional loops and Sunset Campground are open from late spring to early autumn. The 114-room Bryce Canyon Lodge is another way to stay overnight. ## See also - List of national parks of the United States

Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant

Themed restaurant at Disney's Hollywood Studios

The Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant is a theme restaurant at Disney's Hollywood Studios, one of the four main theme parks at Walt Disney World. Established in May 1991, the restaurant is modeled after a 1950s drive-in theater. Walt Disney Imagineering designed the booths to resemble convertibles of the period, and some servers act as carhops while wearing roller skates. While eating, guests watch a large projection screen displaying clips of 1950s and 1960s films as Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. The restaurant serves traditional cuisine of the United States. Popcorn functions as a complimentary hors d'oeuvre. Initially, the menu listed items with themed names, such as "Tossed in Space" (garden salad), "The Cheesecake that Ate New York", and "Attack of the Killer Club Sandwich", but these playful names were later altered so that they now describe the dishes in a more standard and straightforward manner. In 1991, the Sci-Fi Dine-In opened along with nineteen other new Walt Disney World attractions marking the complex's twentieth anniversary. By the following year, the Sci-Fi Dine-In was serving upwards of 2,200 people daily during peak periods, making it the park's most popular restaurant. Thai movie theater operator EGV Entertainment opened the EGV Drive-in Cafe in Bangkok in 2003, in a very similar style to the Sci-Fi Dine-In. The Sci-Fi Dine-In has received mixed reviews. USA Today's list of the best restaurants in American amusement parks ranks the Sci-Fi Dine-In fifteenth, but many reviewers rate it more highly for its atmosphere than for its cuisine. Ed Bumgardner of the Winston-Salem Journal wrote that the food is more expensive than it is worth, specifically calling the restaurant's roast beef sandwich both delicious and a ripoff. In their book Vegetarian Walt Disney World and Greater Orlando, Susan Shumaker and Than Saffel call the Sci-Fi Dine-In "the wackiest dining experience in any Disney park". ## History The Sci-Fi Dine-In, located on Commissary Lane across from Star Tours and adjacent to ABC Commissary, opened on April 20, 1991 as one of the twenty new attractions opened at Walt Disney World to mark the complex's twentieth anniversary. The restaurant was created with a strong emphasis on theme, in emulation of the 50's Prime Time Café, which had opened two years prior. Disney hoped that the focus on theme would bring the Sci-Fi Dine-In the level of success that had been garnered by the 50's Prime Time Café. Within five weeks of opening, it was serving between 1,500 and 2,000 meals on a daily basis, just as the 50's Prime Time Café was doing. A year after opening, the Sci-Fi Dine-In had become the most popular restaurant in the park, serving more than 2,200 people per day at peak periods. Starting from its earliest days, the restaurant equipped its servers with point of sale mobile devices that relayed orders to a printer in the kitchen, which was considered at the time to be in keeping with the science fiction theme because the technology had been developed shortly prior. In 2003, there were twenty character meals offered at Walt Disney World, during which actors portraying various Disney characters would interact with guests while they ate at the parks' restaurants, and Disney was in the process of increasing the presence of costumed characters in the parks at the time. Nonetheless, Minnie Mouse character meals held at Hollywood & Vine were discontinued that year, and Robert Johnson of the Orlando Sentinel partially attributed this cancellation to competition from the Sci-Fi Dine-In, which he said "almost always has a line of customers waiting". ## Theme The Sci-Fi Dine-In is modeled after a 1950s drive-in theater. The entrance is made to look like a box office, and guests can walk from there along a tall fence to the dining room, where they sit at formica countertops in booths made to look like convertibles from the 1940s and 1950s. These booths were designed by Walt Disney Imagineering and are made of fiberglass with much chrome plating. The cars have whitewall tires, and speakers are mounted on poles next to each car. The license plates are dated from 1955, and each convertible seats four people, although these mock vehicles were initially six-seaters when the restaurant first opened. There are six picnic tables near the back of the room that are only used when the rest of the restaurant is full and there are guests who are willing to forego the experience of sitting in the cars. All guests who make reservations are seated in the cars, although this was not the case the year the restaurant first opened. The restaurant has a total seating capacity of 260. Some of the servers at the Sci-Fi Dine-In wear roller skates, acting as carhops, while others improvise characters such as a police officer ostensibly in search of people who have sneaked into the theater without paying. The dining room is dark and air-conditioned, and measures 8,400 square feet (780 m²). The ceiling simulates a night sky replete with twinkling stars made from optical fibers. There is the facade of a snack counter at the back of the room, behind which is the kitchen. The upper walls of the dining room display a cyclorama of Southern California as seen over a fence. While eating at the Sci-Fi Dine-In, guests watch film clips from 1950s and 1960s science fiction films, B horror films, monster movies, pseudo-documentaries, bizarre newsreels, and animated cartoons, all on a loop that lasts 47 minutes. The film clips are taken from such films as The Blob, Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, Teenagers from Outer Space, The Amazing Colossal Man, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Invasion of the Saucer Men, and Cat-Women of the Moon.<ref>For the inclusion of The Blob, see Sehlinger & Testa (2014), p. 491. - For the inclusion of Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, see Miller (2011), p. 122. - For the inclusion of Teenagers from Outer Space, see Gindin & Greenhill-Taylor (2012), p. 149. - For the inclusion of The Amazing Colossal Man, see - For the inclusion of Plan 9 from Outer Space, see - For the inclusion of Invasion of the Saucer Men, see - For the inclusion of Cat-Women of the Moon, see Sandler (2007), p. 257.</ref> The original Attack of the 50 Foot Woman trailer is also included. The clips are shown on a large projection screen. During Star Wars Weekends, a special breakfast is offered called the Star Wars Dine-In Galactic Breakfast, during which guests can interact with Star Wars characters and watch clips from the Star Wars films. Film props and vintage horror and science fiction movie posters can be found on the outside perimeter of the themed restaurant, including many props used in Disney's The Rocketeer, which premiered about three months after the restaurant opened. ## Food At the Sci-Fi Dine-In, lunch guests stay for an average of fifty minutes and dinner guests for an average of just longer than an hour, with lunch and dinner guests being served their food on average five and ten minutes after ordering respectively. The restaurant participates in the Disney Dining Plan. Meals are served starting at 10:30 a.m. on Sundays and Wednesdays, and starting at 11:00 a.m. every other day of the week. The restaurant closes each day at the same time that the park does, which is in the late evening. The menu is the same all day, without a distinction between lunch and dinner. A full bar service is available, and there is also a limited wine selection. Food selection at the restaurant comes from the traditional cuisine of the United States. Popcorn used to be served as a free hors d'oeuvre. Other food items include milkshakes, hot fudge sundaes, seafood salad, turkey sloppy joes, fried pickles, St. Louis-style barbecue ribs, beef-and-blue-cheese salads, sautéed shrimp with farfalle, French fries, cucumber salads, Buffalo wings, Boca Burgers, Tofutti, and steaks. Drinks include souvenir phosphorescent ice cubes. The desserts are served in larger portions than are customary elsewhere. There are vegetarian options. The chefs at the Sci-Fi Dine-In sometimes cater for special requests in advance. The cookbook Delicious Disney Just for Kids contains a recipe for the BLT soup served at the Sci-Fi Dine-In. Items in the restaurant's menu used to have themed names, such as "The Galactic Grill" (triple-decker grilled cheese sandwich), "Beast from 1,000 Islands" (Reuben sandwich), "Tossed in Space" (garden salad), "The Cheesecake that Ate New York", "Attack of the Killer Club Sandwich", "Beach Party Panic" (fish fillet), "Saucer Sightings" (rib eye steak), "Terror of the Tides" (broiled fish), and "Journey to the Center of the Pasta" (vegetable lasagne), but these have since been replaced with more descriptive names. A popcorn bisque was once on the menu, but it was removed due to poor reception. ## Imitation In 2003, EGV Entertainment, a movie theater operator in Thailand, opened the EGV Drive-in Cafe in Bangkok, explicitly modeling the restaurant after the Sci-Fi Dine-In. Wichai Poolwaraluk, the company's executive president and chief executive officer, visited the Sci-Fi Dine-In in 2000, and was inspired to open a similar restaurant. He said that, while he was eating at the Sci-Fi Dine-In, the other guests seemed more interested in their food than in the film clips on the screen, and he therefore considered the Sci-Fi Dine-In more of a restaurant than a theater, with the film reel simply being a gimmick. Appealing to EGV's identity as a movie theater operator, Poolwaraluk said that the EGV Drive-in Cafe "can probably do a better job blending the cinema and the food together and also concentrate on both of them". Like the Sci-Fi Dine-In, the EGV Drive-in Cafe features classic cars for seating, but, instead of showing film clips on a loop, the EGV Drive-in Cafe shows entire short films. In 2014, NBCUniversal opened Universal Orlando's first prime-value hotel, Universal's Cabana Bay Beach Resort, which houses the Bayliner Diner, a restaurant that borrows its premise from the Sci-Fi Dine-In. Both restaurants play old film footage on a loop. ## Reception The Sci-Fi Dine-In has received mixed reviews. Jack Hayes of Nation's Restaurant News calls the Sci-Fi Dine-In "wacky" and "on the cutting edge of sheer dining fun". In USA Today's list of the sixteen best restaurants in American amusement parks, the Sci-Fi Dine-In ranks fifteenth. Samuel Muston of The Independent writes that the Sci-Fi Dine-In is "memorable in the best way". In the Evansville Courier & Press, Pete DiPrimio writes that the Sci-Fi Dine-In ranks among the most unusual of the restaurants at Disney's Hollywood Studios. In The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2015, Bob Sehlinger and Len Testa call the Sci-Fi Dine-In the most entertaining restaurant in Walt Disney World, writing that "everyone gets a kick out of this unusual dining room". Multiple reviewers have called the Sci-Fi Dine-In more notable for being an attraction than a food destination. One reviewer from The Guardian compares the Sci-Fi Dine-In to Epcot's Coral Reef Restaurant, writing that both restaurants "are great settings" where "eating is awful". Sehlinger and Testa consider the prices too high, and the food too simple, although they praise the Reuben sandwich and the ribs. Schultz writes that the food is simple and that some of the beers are decent. The book DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Walt Disney World Resort & Orlando also states that the food is more expensive than it is worth. Ed Bumgardner of the Winston-Salem Journal shared this opinion as well, specifically singling out the restaurant's roast beef sandwich as a ripoff, despite calling it delicious. Peggy Katalinich of the Tampa Bay Times writes that, although the food is mediocre, "Who cares? Food is besides the point". She goes on to argue that the prices are low, particularly for sandwiches. In Frommer's Walt Disney World and Orlando 2012, Laura Lea Miller expresses disappointment that the menu no longer contains the playful item names it once did. She writes positively of the atmosphere, but considers the food mediocre. In the book Walt Disney World Resort: Also Includes Seaworld and Central Florida, Corey Sandler writes that the Sci-Fi Dine-In is "a must-see eatery... for adults and adventurous kids" and that "the food is appropriate for a drive-in theater—very ordinary, but that's not really the reason you came". Some food items at the Sci-Fi Dine-In have been received favorably by reviewers. Rona Gindin and Jennifer Greenhill-Taylor write highly of the restaurant's hot-fudge sundaes in Fodor's 2012 Walt Disney World. In Plan Your Walt Disney World Vacation in No Time, Douglas Ingersoll writes very positively of the milkshakes, and argues that the sandwiches and burgers are better than at the fast food restaurants in the park. A reviewer for the United Kingdom's The Sentinel also writes positively of the Sci-Fi Dine-In's milkshakes, and argues that, "if you chose to treat yourself to a good lunch in one of the Disney parks, then this is the one". Positive reviews of the Sci-Fi Dine-In have indicated diverse reasons for appreciating the restaurant. In Vegetarian Walt Disney World and Greater Orlando, Susan Shumaker and Than Saffel write that the restaurant has "the wackiest dining experience in any Disney park". Shumaker and Saffel contend that the Sci-Fi Dine-In provides a reasonable compromise when vegetarians and non-vegetarians are looking to eat together, and that it is also suitable for both large and small families with young children. The restaurant tends to be popular with children, and it is common for people who lived through the 1950s to enjoy the restaurant for its nostalgia value. Paul Schultz of the Daily News writes, "Anyone who is a fan of trashy sci-fi movies of the 1950s should check [the Sci-Fi Dine-In] out". In his book Sci-Fi Movie Freak, Robert Ring calls the Sci-Fi Dine-In film clips "hokey", while David Steele of The Rotarian calls them "classically awful", and Rick Ramseyer of Restaurant Business Magazine'' calls them "campy".

M-28 (Michigan highway)

State highway in Michigan, United States

M-28 is an east–west state trunkline highway that traverses nearly all of the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan, from Wakefield to near Sault Ste. Marie in Bruce Township. Along with US Highway 2 (US 2), M-28 forms a pair of primary highways linking the Upper Peninsula from end to end, providing a major access route for traffic from Michigan and Canada along the southern shore of Lake Superior. M-28 is the longest state trunkline in Michigan numbered with the "M-" prefix at 290.373 miles (467.310 km). The entire highway is listed on the National Highway System, while three sections of M-28 are part of the Lake Superior Circle Tour. M-28 also carries two memorial highway designations along its route. Throughout its course across the Upper Peninsula, M-28 passes through forested woodlands, bog swamps, urbanized areas, and along the Lake Superior shoreline. Sections of roadway cross the Ottawa National Forest and both units of the Hiawatha National Forest. Some of the other landmarks accessible from M-28 include the Seney Stretch, Seney National Wildlife Refuge and several historic bridges. M-28 is an original trunkline designation, dating to the 1919 formation of the state's trunkline system. The original highway was much shorter than the current version. M-28 was expanded eastward to the Sault Ste. Marie area in the late 1920s. The western end has been expanded twice to different locations on the Wisconsin state line. Other changes along the routing have led to the creation of three different business loops at various times, with one still extant. Future changes, proposed by Marquette County but not accepted by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), could see M-28 rerouted over County Road 480 (CR 480). ## Route description M-28 is a major highway for Michigan and Canadian traffic along the south shore of Lake Superior. It forms the northern half of a pair of primary trunklines linking the Upper Peninsula from end to end; US 2 is the southern partner. The 290.373-mile (467.310 km) highway comprises mostly two lanes, undivided except for sections that are concurrent with US 41 near Marquette. The "Marquette Bypass" portion of US 41/M-28 is a four-lane expressway, and segments of the highway in Marquette County have four lanes. The entire route is part of the National Highway System, and three sections of the trunkline are part of the Lake Superior Circle Tour. ### Western terminus to Shingleton In the west, M-28 begins at a signalized intersection with US 2 in Wakefield. Heading north, the highway passes Sunday Lake heading out of town. After crossing into southwestern Ontonagon County and the Eastern Time Zone, the trunkline highway skirts the northern shore of Lake Gogebic, running concurrently with M-64. The first section of M-28 designated as a part of the Lake Superior Circle Tour is from the western terminus to the eastern junction with M-64 in Bergland, where the Circle Tour turns north along M-64, leaving M-28. Here, M-28 has its lowest traffic counts; within the 2013 MDOT survey, the road is listed with only an average annual daily traffic (AADT) of 1,425 vehicles on a section of highway between Bergland and the US 45 intersection in Bruce Crossing. The trunkline runs through heavily forested areas of southern Houghton and Baraga counties. At the eastern junction with US 41 near Covington, M-28 receives the Circle Tour designation again and exits the Ottawa National Forest. In Baraga and Marquette counties, US 41/M-28 passes through hilly terrain before entering the urban areas of Ishpeming, Negaunee and Marquette. Approximately 13,000–17,000 vehicles use this section from Ishpeming eastward through Negaunee. West of the city of Marquette, US 41/M-28 had a peak 2013 AADT of 32,805 vehicles in Marquette Township along a retail and business corridor. This peak level is sustained until the start of the Marquette Bypass, where the traffic returns to the 16,500-vehicle and higher levels seen in Ishpeming and Negaunee. South of the city of Marquette, traffic counts once again climb to 19,620 vehicles. In Chocolay Township the AADT drops to 8,840 vehicles before tapering off to 3,065 vehicles by the county line. At the Ishpeming–Negaunee city line, M-28 changes memorial highway designations. From the western terminus to this point, M-28 is called the "Veterans Memorial Highway", but it becomes the "D. J. Jacobetti Memorial Highway" to honor the longest-serving member of the Michigan Legislature, Dominic J. Jacobetti. The Jacobetti Highway designation ends at the eastern M-123 junction in Chippewa County. Between Marquette and Munising, M-28 closely parallels the Lake Superior shoreline, providing scenic views of the lake and its "lonesome sandy beaches". The Lakenenland sculpture park is located in Chocolay Township near Shot Point in eastern Marquette County. This roadside attraction is owned by Tom Lakenen and features fanciful works of art made of scrap iron. Near the community of Au Train, M-28 crosses into the western unit of the Hiawatha National Forest. West of Munising is a ferry dock offering transport to the Grand Island National Recreation Area, and at Munising there is easy access to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The roadway also features variable-message signs to warn motorists of winter weather-related traffic closures along the lakeshore. Installed at the US 41 and M-94 junctions, the signs advise motorists which sections of roadway are closed. Per MDOT policy, only snowplows are allowed on these sections during a closure. The highway exits the Hiawatha National Forest at the Alger County–Schoolcraft County line along the Seney Stretch. ### Seney Stretch The portion of M-28 between Seney and Shingleton, called the Seney Stretch, is 25 miles (40 km) of "straight-as-an-arrow highway" across the Great Manistique Swamp, "though others claim it's 50 miles [80 km], only because it seems longer." The Seney Stretch is the longest such section of highway in the state, and "one of the longest stretches of curveless highway east of the Mississippi." The highway is often cited as the "state's most boring route" according to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and Hunts' Guide. The straightness and flatness over a great distance are given as reasons for the reputation of this stretch as boring. The road across the swamp was constructed parallel to the line of the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railway (later the Soo Line Railroad). It was first numbered as a part of M-25 when that designation was used along today's M-28 east of US 41. The most significant changes made to the stretch since its original construction were the addition of passing relief lanes and a full-scale, year-round rest area in 1999. Part of the Seney Stretch forms the northern border of the Seney National Wildlife Refuge. Established in 1935, this refuge is a managed wetland in Schoolcraft County. It has an area of 95,212 acres (385 km²), and contains the Strangmoor Bog National Natural Landmark within its boundaries. ### Seney to eastern terminus Past Seney, M-28 once again enters woodlands on the eastern end of the Upper Peninsula. In Luce County, the roadway passes through the community of McMillan en route to Newberry. The Circle Tour departs M-28 to follow M-123 at Newberry, looping north to the Tahquamenon Falls State Park. East of town, the road passes Luce County Airport off of Luce CR 399. From there, M-28 crosses the east and west branches of the Sage River and passes south of Soo Junction, before the Chippewa County border. In Chippewa County, M-28 begins bending slightly east-northeastward. Hulbert Lake is located south of Hulbert; north of the lake, the highway enters the eastern unit of the Hiawatha National Forest. At the eastern junction of M-28 and M-123 near Eckerman and Strongs, the Circle Tour returns to M-28 and the D.J. Jacobetti Memorial Highway designation ends. The highway leaves the eastern unit of the Hiawatha National Forest between the communities of Raco and Brimley. M-221 leads north from the main highway on an old routing of M-28 to connect to the community of Brimley and the Bay Mills Indian Community. Brimley State Park is just east of Brimley on the old 6 Mile Road alignment of M-28. The highway meets Interstate 75 (I-75) at exit 386, and the Lake Superior Circle Tour departs M-28 to follow I-75. This interchange is just west of H-63/Mackinac Trail, a former segment of US 2. M-28 continues three miles (4.8 km) farther to its eastern terminus with M-129. ### Services Along the routing of M-28, MDOT has established several roadside parks and rest areas. Two of these are in Ontonagon County near Ewen and Trout Creek. A park with a picnic area and a footbridge lies near Tioga Creek in Baraga County east of the US 41 junction. In Michigamme a scenic turnout and a roadside park overlook Lake Michigamme, and along Lake Superior south of Marquette is a tourist information center built as a log cabin. East of the H-01 junction in Au Train is a roadside park that includes Scott Falls. Further east, a year-round rest area is located on the western end of the Seney Stretch. Three other roadside parks lie east of Harvey in Shelter Bay, on the shores of Deer Lake and west of Newberry. ## History ### Mainline history Formed by July 1, 1919, M-28 began in Wakefield at a junction with then M-12 and ran roughly along the current alignment to end at M-15, 6.5 miles (10.5 km) east of Covington. These two termini roughly correspond to the modern US 2 and western US 41 junctions respectively. M-28 was extended in 1927 along US 41 into Marquette County and east over M-25 through Chatham, Munising, and Newberry, before ending in downtown Sault Ste. Marie. At Negaunee, M-28 took the former routing of M-15 between Negaunee and Marquette for 10 miles (16 km) while US 41 ran along a portion of M-35. This southern loop routing of M-28 lasted until approximately 1936, when M-28 was moved to US 41, and the former route became CR 492. A new routing of M-28 in the Newberry area opened later that year, and a new M-28A (later Bus. M-28) existed until 1953. Another realignment in 1937 marked the transfer of M-28 out of downtown Ishpeming and Negaunee. This former routing later became Bus. M-28. In the late 1930s, a highway numbered M-178 was designated between M-28 south of Munising to M-94 in town. In 1941, the routings of M-28 and M-94 were reversed between Harvey and Munising, and M-28 supplanted the M-178 designation completely. Since then, M-28 has run along the lakeshore through Au Train. M-28 was extended along US 2 to the state line at Ironwood, and the eastern end of M-28 through Brimley was moved to a new alignment ending at US 2, in Dafter in 1942. The eastern end was moved along US 2 back to Sault Ste. Marie in 1948, though the terminus was returned to Dafter in 1950. From 1952 to 1962, M-28 crossed US 2 at Wakefield going south and stopped at the Wisconsin border, connecting with a county road. This segment of the highway (now Gogebic CR 519) was transferred back to the county in 1962. M-94 previously looped along Munising-Van Meer-Shingleton Road (now H-58 and H-15) north of M-28 between Munising and Shingleton. This routing was abandoned on November 7, 1963 in favor of the current concurrency. The last significant change to the M-28 routing occurred on March 3, 1989, when the eastern terminus was moved east to M-129. MDOT unveiled plans on March 31, 2009, to rebuild the intersection between Front Street and the eastern end of the Marquette Bypass during 2010. The previous intersection configuration dated back to the 1960s and had been labeled as "dangerous and [causing] significant traffic delays" by the designers of the replacement. A traffic study concluded in 2007 that the intersection would need either the roundabout or a traffic signal with several turning lanes to accommodate the traffic needs in the area. MDOT decided in favor of a two-lane, 150-foot (46 m) roundabout retaining the right-turn lanes from the previous intersection layout. These lanes will be used by right-turning traffic to bypass the circle at the center of the intersection. Construction started on the project in May. A section of the intersection was opened in July to traffic from the south that turns west. The lanes northbound into downtown were opened in the beginning of August, and the city held a ribbon cutting ceremony on August 19, 2010. The remaining lanes were opened the next day. ### Historic bridges MDOT has highlighted five historic bridges along the route of M-28 on the MDOT website. In Interior Township, Ontonagon County, the highway crosses the Ontonagon River over a bridge built in 1929. Designed by the State Highway Department and built by the firm of Meads and Anderson, the Ontonagon River Bridge is one of only three steel arch bridges in Michigan. The main span arch is 150 feet (46 m) long. A former routing of M-28 in Covington Township crosses the Rock River. Although this section was bypassed by a new alignment of the trunkline in 1924, the bridge remains complete "with corbeled bulkheads and six panels recessed in the concrete spandrel walls." The corbels and spandrels are decorative features found in the concrete sides of the bridge. Today, drivers cannot use the Peshekee River Bridge south of US 41/M-28 in western Marquette County's Michigamme Township. The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999 as "Trunk Line Bridge No. 1" for its engineering and architectural significance. MDOT has listed it as "one of Michigan's most important vehicular bridges." It was the first bridge designed by the Michigan State Highway Department, the forerunner to MDOT, in 1914. It was bypassed by a newer bridge built over the Peshekee River on US 41/M-28 subsequently abandoned as a roadway. The replacement bridge was bypassed and demolished in 1995. The next historic bridge listed by MDOT along M-28 is over the Sand River in Onota Township in Alger County. While not visible to motorists, the bridge, constructed in 1939, is the longest rural rigid-frame span in Michigan. Most bridges of this type were built in urban locations, and soil conditions in the state limit locations for this style of bridge. The bridge over the East Branch of the Tahquamenon River in Chippewa County was built in 1926 as a "formative exercise in what would evolve into a state standard design." The 55-foot (17 m) bridge was built with nine lines of I-beams encased in concrete. Only one other bridge in Michigan was built with such concrete encasement. ## Future In the August 24, 2005 edition, the Marquette Mining Journal reported that the Marquette County Board and the County Road Commission were negotiating with MDOT to transfer the jurisdiction of Marquette County Road 480 to the state. Several routing options have been discussed, though all would make CR 480 a part of M-28. Cost was the primary reason given behind rerouting M-28 along CR 480. "The road commission receives about $50,000 a year in state gas tax money but spends about $100,000 to maintain CR 480 because of the type and volume of traffic it receives." Handing CR 480 over to the state would shift the maintenance costs to the state, as well. MDOT has indicated that it has not requested jurisdiction, but rather if it assumed control of the route, the community would need to support a through-route. Several proposals have arisen, including creating a "spur" from US 41/M-28 through the east end of Ishpeming to meet CR 480 west of Negaunee. This spur would pass through recently reopened former mining "caving grounds", and to the south of the Mather A & B Mine complex. According to Gerry Corkin, Marquette County Board Chairman, "the land that was purchased by Ishpeming and Negaunee, the mining company land, this has the potential to help in the development of that if this is compatible. I think both cities will be interested in taking a look at what the land uses are and where this [spur] would push through." The spur proposal would open land to development between the downtown areas of the two cities. If jurisdiction is transferred, and M-28 is routed over CR 480 as proposed, M-28 would leave the concurrency with US 41 near Teal Lake in Negaunee, and cross the caving grounds west of downtown to connect to Rail Street. Rail Street would serve as the connector to CR 480, which ends at the intersection of Rail and Ann streets and Healey Avenue. Proposals indicate two routing options for the east end of CR 480. One would route M-28 back along US 41 from Beaver Grove north of the CR 480 eastern terminus to the existing M-28 in Harvey. A second would route it along CR 551/Cherry Creek Road from CR 480 to M-28 in Harvey. ## Business loops There have been three business loops for M-28: Ishpeming–Negaunee, Marquette and Newberry. Only the business loop serving Ishpeming and Negaunee is still a state-maintained trunkline. US 41/M-28 was relocated to bypass the two cities' downtowns in 1937. The highway through downtown Ishpeming and Negaunee later carried the ALT US 41/ALT M-28 designation before being designated Bus. M-28 in 1958. The western end of the business loop was transferred to local government control when Bus. M-28 was moved along Lakeshore Drive in 1999. Bus. US 41 in Marquette was first shown on a map in 1964 after the construction of the Marquette Bypass. It was later designated Bus. US 41/Bus. M-28 on a map in 1975; this second designation was removed from maps by 1982. The entire business loop was turned back to local control in a "route swap" between the City of Marquette and MDOT announced in early 2005. The proposal transferred jurisdiction on the unsigned M-554 and the business route from the state to the city. The state would take jurisdiction over a segment of McClellan Avenue to be used to extend M-553 to US 41/M-28. In addition, MDOT would pay $2.5 million (equivalent to $ in ) for reconstruction work planned for 2007. The transfer would increase Marquette's operational and maintenance liability expenses by $26,000 (equivalent to $ in ) and place the financial burden of the future replacement of a stop light on the city. On October 10, 2005, MDOT and Marquette transferred jurisdiction over the three roadways. As a result, Bus. US 41 was decommissioned when the local government took control over Washington and Front streets. As a result of the decommissioning, the 2006 maps did not show the now former business loop. The Newberry Bus. M-28 was designated from 1936 until 1952 as M-28A. The MSHD maps of the time showed it signed as Bus. M-28 in 1952 before it was turned back to local control in 1953. ## Major intersections |} ## See also - List of longest state highways in the United States

Suillus pungens

Species of fungus in the family Suillaceae found in California

Suillus pungens, commonly known as the pungent slippery jack or the pungent suillus, is a species of fungus in the genus Suillus. The fruit bodies of the fungus have slimy convex caps up to 14 cm (5.5 in) wide. The mushroom is characterized by the very distinct color changes that occur in the cap throughout development. Typically, the young cap is whitish, later becoming grayish-olive to reddish-brown or a mottled combination of these colors. The mushroom has a dotted stem (stipe) up to 7 cm (2.8 in) long, and 2 cm (0.8 in) thick. On the underside on the cap is the spore-bearing tissue consisting of minute vertically arranged tubes that appear as a surface of angular, yellowish pores. The presence of milky droplets on the pore surface of young individuals, especially in humid environments, is a characteristic feature of this species. S. pungens can usually be distinguished from other similar Suillus species by differences in distribution, odor and taste. The mushroom is considered edible, but not highly regarded. An ectomycorrhizal species, S. pungens forms an intimate mutualistic relationship between its underground mycelium and the young roots of the associated host tree. The fungus—limited in distribution to California—fruits almost exclusively with Monterey and bishop pine, two trees with small and scattered natural ranges concentrated in the West Coast of the United States. Several studies have investigated the role of S. pungens in the coastal Californian forest ecosystem it occupies. Although the species produces more fruit bodies than other competing ectomycorrhizal fungi in the same location, it is not a dominant root colonizer, and occupies only a small percentage of ectomycorrhizal root tips. The fungus's propensity to fruit prolifically despite minimal root colonization is a result of its ability to efficiently transfer nutrients from its host for its own use. ## Taxonomy, classification, and phylogeny The fungus was first described scientifically by American mycologists Harry D. Thiers and Alexander H. Smith in their 1964 monograph on North American Suillus species. The type collection was made on the campus of San Francisco State University in San Francisco. Smith and Thiers classified S. pungens in section Suilli—a grouping of related species characterized by the presence of either a ring on the stipe, a partial veil adhering to the cap margin, or a "false veil" not attached to the stipe but initially covering the tube cavity. A 1996 molecular analysis of 38 different Suillus species used the sequences of their internal transcribed spacers to infer phylogenetic relationships and clarify the taxonomy of the genus. The results suggest that S. pungens was genetically similar to S. collinitus, S. neoalbidipes, S. pseudobrevipes, S. luteus, S. brevipes, S. weaverae, and certain isolates of S. granulatus. The specific epithet is derived from the Latin pungens, and refers to the pungent aroma of the fruit bodies. The mushroom is commonly known as the "pungent slippy jack" or the "pungent suillus". It has also been referred to as the "slippery jack", a common name applied to several Suillus species. ## Description The cap of S. pungens is roughly convex when young, becoming plano-convex (flat on one side and rounded on the other) to somewhat flat with age, and reaches diameters of 4–14 cm (1.6–5.5 in). The cap surface is sticky to slimy when moist, becoming shiny when dried. The surface is smooth but is sometimes streaked with the sticky glue-like cap slime when older. The cap color is highly variable in this species, and the cap is often variegated with a mixture of light and dark colors. When young it is dirty-white to olive with pale olive splotches. Maturing caps can retain the color they had when young, or become tawny to orange-yellow to reddish-brown, or a combination of these colors. The cap margin is initially rolled inward and has a cottony roll of white tissue, but becomes naked and curves downward with age. The flesh is 1–2 cm (0.4–0.8 in) thick, white and unchanging in young fruit bodies, frequently changing to yellow when older. The tubes that comprise the hymenium (spore-bearing tissue) on the underside of the cap are up to 1 cm (0.4 in) long, adnate when young, becoming decurrent or nearly so with age. In young specimens, they are whitish to pale buff, and are covered with milky droplets that become brown to ochraceous when dried. As specimens mature the color of the pore surface changes to yellowish, and finally to dark yellow. The angular pores, which are 1–1.5 mm in diameter, are not radially arranged, and do not change color when bruised. The stipe is solid (rather than hollow), 3–7 cm (1.2–2.8 in) long, and 1–2 cm (0.4–0.8 in) thick near the top. Its shape is variable: either roughly equal in width throughout, thicker at the base, or somewhat thicker in the middle. Its surface is dry and smooth, and covered with irregularly shaped glandular dots. The dots—minute clumps of pigmented cells—are initially reddish before becoming brownish. The background color of the stipe is initially whitish (roughly the same color as the tubes), but becomes more yellow with age. It does not change color when bruised, and does not have a ring. The flesh of the stipe is white, and does not change color when exposed to air. The spore print is olive-brown to pale cinnamon-brown. Individual spores are thin-walled, hyaline (translucent), and smooth. Their shape is ellipsoid to roughly cylindrical in face view or inequilateral when viewed in profile, and they measure 9.5–10 by 2.8–3.5 μm. The basidia (spore-bearing cells of the hymenium) are hyaline, club-shaped and four-spored, with dimensions of 33–36 by 8–10 μm. The thin-walled cystidia are rare to scattered on the tube surface but abundant on the pores, where they usually occur in massive clusters. They appear dark brown when mounted in a dilute (3%) solution of potassium hydroxide (KOH), and are cylindric to roughly club-shaped, measuring 43–79 by 7–10 μm. They are usually encrusted with pigment, although some may be hyaline. The tissue comprising the tube is hyaline, and made of divergent to nearly parallel hyphae that are 3–5 μm wide. The pileipellis is a tissue type known as an ixotrichodermium (made of interwoven gelatinized hyphae); it stains brown in KOH, and is made of hyphae that are 4–5 μm wide. The stipe cuticle is made of clusters of cystidia similar to those found in the hymenium. Clamp connections are absent in the hyphae of S. pungens. Several chemical tests can be employed in the field to aid in the identification of S. pungens. With an application of a drop of KOH, the flesh will turn vinaceous (the color of red wine), the tubes red, the cap cuticle black, and the stipe cuticle pale vinaceous. With ammonium hydroxide (NH₄OH), the flesh becomes very pale vinaceous, and the tubes turn bright red. Iron(II) sulfate (FeSO₄) turns the flesh gray, the tubes dark gray to black, and the stipe cuticle light gray. ### Edibility The mushroom is considered edible, but not choice. Its taste is harsh, nauseating, and weakly acidic; the odor is strong and ranges from pleasant, resembling bananas, to pungent. When collecting for the table, young specimens are preferred, as older ones "literally seethe with fat, agitated maggots and sag with so much excess moisture that they practically demand to be wrung out like a sponge\!" Michael Kuo's 100 Edible Mushrooms (2007) rates the mushroom's edibility as "bad" and warns that dishes cooked with the mushroom will assume an unpleasant taste. ### Similar species Suillus pungens is characterized by the very distinct color changes that occur in the cap as it develops. The range of color variation makes it possible to misidentify the species with others whose color overlaps. Suillus pungens has been misidentified as S. placidus because of the white color of the young fruit bodies and the droplets of exudate. S. placidus has a wider distribution, is usually found in association with eastern white pine, is generally smaller, with a maximum cap diameter up to 9 cm (3.5 in), and has smaller spores, measuring 7–9 by 2.5–3.2 μm. It does not have any distinctive taste or odor. North American S. granulatus is another potential lookalike species, and at maturity it is nearly identical to Suillus pungens. The cap of S. granulatus is variable in color, ranging from pale yellow to various shades of brown, while the pore surface is initially whitish, later becoming yellowish, and similar to S. placidus, its typical host is eastern white pine. Unlike S. pungens, it lacks a characteristic odor and taste. The Californian species Suillus glandulosipes has veil material attached to the edge of the cap when young. It also lacks the distinctive changes in cap color during development, is associated with lodgepole pine, has smaller spores (6.6–8.8 by 2.5–3 μm), and lacks any obvious taste and odor. Another Californian species, Suillus quiescens, newly described in 2010, may resemble S. pungens, especially at maturity. S. quiescens can be distinguished by its lack of white or olive colors when young and by a less glandular stipe when mature. ## Ecology, habitat and distribution Suillus pungens is an ectomycorrhizal (EM) basidiomycete that forms symbiotic relationships almost exclusively with Monterey pine (Pinus radiata) and bishop pine (Pinus muricata); some collections have been made under knobcone pine (Pinus attenuata) and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), but only within the range of Monterey pine. All these trees have small scattered natural ranges largely restricted to California. An EM symbiosis is a mutualistic relationship between an EM fungus and the root tip of a compatible EM plant. The fruit bodies of Suillus pungens grow solitarily, scattered or in groups in humus. They are often found growing near fruit bodies of Chroogomphus vinicolor and Helvella lacunosa. Suillus pungens is often the most abundant Suillus in the San Francisco Bay Area. The type collection was made on the campus of San Francisco State University in San Francisco, where it occurs in abundance during the fall and winter seasons. Although it occurs most frequently in the autumn and winter, it is one of the few species of Suillus that continue to fruit sporadically throughout the year, especially in wet weather. It has also been identified in the southeastern Sierra Nevada and on Santa Cruz Island. A genet is a group of genetically identical individuals that have grown in a given location, all originating vegetatively from a single ancestor. Once established, genets vegetatively spread hyphae out from the root tip into the soil and may connect two or more trees to form a network of mycorrhizae. In field studies, the approximate size of fungal genets is typically estimated by collecting and mapping fruit bodies on a site, determining which fruit bodies are genetically identical by either somatic incompatibility (a method fungi use to distinguish self from non-self by delimiting their own mycelia from that of other individuals of the same species) or various molecular techniques, and then determining the distance between identical fruit bodies. In a 1996 study, mycologists Monique Gardes and Thomas Bruns hypothesized that S. pungens, an abundant fruiter in pine forests, would be dominant on the roots of the pine trees. However, by sampling underground ectomycorrhizae in addition to above-ground fruit bodies, they found that the fungus can fruit prolifically while occupying only a small fraction of the ectomycorrhizal root assemblage, which was otherwise dominated by Russula species and Tomentella sublilacina. Gardes and Bruns hypothesized that the disparity between above- and below-ground representation may be because the fungus invests less energy in vegetative growth and persistence and more in fruiting, or alternatively, because the species is particularly efficient at acquiring carbon from its hosts and so needs to colonize only a few rootlets to obtain enough to allow abundant fruiting. A 1998 study by Pierluigi Bonello and colleagues used single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis to detect minute genetic differences among S. pungens genets, and showed that most of the fruiting occurred from a single large genet. This result indicates that the fungus persists because of extensive vegetative growth, rather than frequent establishment of new genets from spores, and that it uses carbon resources efficiently. The study also described an S. pungens genet with an area of approximately 300 m² (3,200 sq ft) and a span greater than 40 m (130 ft) across, which was at the time the largest EM fungal genet reported. The large S. pungens genet was not detected after wildfire, demonstrating that it did not survive in the absence of a host, and suggesting that spores are the primary means by which the fungus recolonizes after a fire. ## See also - List of North American boletes

Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount

Active submarine volcano off the southeast coast of the island of Hawaii

Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount (previously known as Lōʻihi) is an active submarine volcano about 22 mi (35 km) off the southeast coast of the island of Hawaii. The top of the seamount is about 3,200 ft (975 m) below sea level. This seamount is on the flank of Mauna Loa, the largest active subaerial shield volcano on Earth. Kamaʻehuakanaloa is the newest volcano in the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, a string of volcanoes that stretches about 3,900 mi (6,200 km) northwest of Kamaʻehuakanaloa. Unlike most active volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean that make up the active plate margins on the Pacific Ring of Fire, Kamaʻehuakanaloa and the other volcanoes of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain are hotspot volcanoes and formed well away from the nearest plate boundary. Volcanoes in the Hawaiian Islands arise from the Hawaii hotspot, and as the youngest volcano in the chain, Kamaʻehuakanaloa is the only Hawaiian volcano in the deep submarine preshield stage of development. Kamaʻehuakanaloa began forming around 400,000 years ago and is expected to begin emerging above sea level about 10,000–100,000 years from now. At its summit, Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount stands more than 10,000 ft (3,000 m) above the seafloor, making it taller than Mount St. Helens was before its catastrophic 1980 eruption. A diverse microbial community resides around Kamaʻehuakanaloa many hydrothermal vents. In the summer of 1996, a swarm of 4,070 earthquakes was recorded at Kamaʻehuakanaloa. At the time this was the most energetic earthquake swarm in Hawaii recorded history. The swarm altered 4 to 5 sq mi (10 to 13 km²) of the seamount's summit; one section, Pele's Vents, collapsed entirely upon itself and formed the renamed Pele's Pit. The volcano has remained relatively active since the 1996 swarm and is monitored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The Hawaii Undersea Geological Observatory (HUGO) provided real-time data on Kamaʻehuakanaloa between 1997 and 1998. Kamaʻehuakanaloa's last known eruption was in 1996, before the earthquake swarm of that summer. ## Naming The name Kamaʻehuakanaloa is a Hawaiian language word for "glowing child of Kanaloa", the god of the ocean. This name was found in two Hawaiian mele from the 19th and early twentieth centuries based on research at the Bishop Museum and was assigned by the Hawaiʻi Board on Geographic Names in 2021 and adopted by the U.S. Geological Survey. From 1955 to 2021 the seamount was called "Lōʻihi", the Hawaiian word for "long", describing its shape. The change to Kamaʻehuakanaloa was made in an effort to be more culturally appropriate given native Hawaiian traditions for naming. ## Characteristics ### Geology Kamaʻehuakanaloa is a seamount, or underwater volcano, on the flank of Mauna Loa, the Earth's tallest shield volcano. It is the newest volcano produced by the Hawaiʻi hotspot in the extensive Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain. The distance between the summit of the older Mauna Loa and the summit of Kamaʻehuakanaloa is about 50 mi (80 km), which is, coincidentally, also the approximate diameter of the Hawaiʻi hotspot. Kamaʻehuakanaloa consists of a summit area with three pit craters, a 7 mi (11 km) long rift zone extending north from the summit, and a 12 mi (19 km) long rift zone extending south-southeast from the summit. The summit's pit craters are named West Pit, East Pit, and Pele's Pit. Pele's Pit is the youngest of this group and is located at the southern part of the summit. The walls of Pele's Pit stand 700 ft (200 m) high and were formed in July 1996 when its predecessor, Pele's Vent, a hydrothermal field near Kamaʻehuakanaloa summit, collapsed into a large depression. The thick crater walls of Pele's Pit – averaging 70 ft (20 m) in width, unusually thick for Hawaiian volcanic craters – suggest its craters have filled with lava multiple times in the past. Kamaʻehuakanaloa's north–south trending rift zones form a distinctive elongated shape, from which the volcano's earlier Hawaiian name "Lōʻihi," meaning "long", derives. The north rift zone consists of a longer western portion and a shorter eastern rift zone. Observations show that both the north and south rift zones lack sediment cover, indicating recent activity. A bulge in the western part of the north rift zone contains three 200–260 ft (60–80 m) cone-shaped prominences. Until 1970, Kamaʻehuakanaloa was thought to be an inactive volcano that had been transported to its current location by sea-floor spreading. The seafloor under Hawaii is 80–100 million years old and was produced at the East Pacific Rise, an oceanic spreading center where new sea floor forms from magma that erupts from the mantle. New oceanic crust moves away from the spreading center. Over a period of 80–100 million years, the sea floor under Hawaii moved from the East Pacific Rise to its present location 3,700 mi (6,000 km) west, carrying ancient seamounts with it. When scientists investigated a series of earthquakes off Hawaii in 1970, they discovered that Kamaʻehuakanaloa was an active member of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain. Kamaʻehuakanaloa is built on the seafloor with a slope of about five degrees. Its northern base on the flank of Mauna Loa is 2,100 yd (1,900 m) below sea level, but its southern base is a more substantial 15,600 ft (4,755 m) below the surface. Thus, the summit is 3,054 ft (931 m) above the seafloor as measured from the base of its north flank, but 12,421 ft (3,786 m) high when measured from the base of its southern flank. Kamaʻehuakanaloa is following the pattern of development that is characteristic of all Hawaiian volcanoes. Geochemical evidence from Kamaʻehuakanaloa's lavas indicates that Kamaʻehuakanaloa is in transition between the preshield and shield volcano stage, providing valuable clues to the early development of Hawaiian volcanoes. In the preshield stage, Hawaiian volcanoes have steeper sides and a lower level of activity, producing an alkali basalt lava. Continued volcanism is expected to eventually give birth to an island at Kamaʻehuakanaloa. It experiences frequent landslides; the growth of the volcano has destabilized its slopes, and extensive areas of debris inhabit the steep southeastern face. Similar deposits from other Hawaiian volcanoes indicate that landslide debris is an important product of the early development of Hawaiian volcanoes. Kamaʻehuakanaloa is predicted to rise above the surface in 10,000 to 100,000 years. ### Age and growth Radiometric dating was used to determine the age of rock samples from Kamaʻehuakanaloa. The Hawaii Center for Volcanology tested samples recovered by various expeditions, notably the 1978 expedition, which provided 17 dredge samples. Most of the samples were found to be of recent origin; the oldest dated rock is around 300,000 years old. Following the 1996 event, some young breccia was also collected. Based on the samples, scientists estimate Kamaʻehuakanaloa is about 400,000 years old. The rock accumulates at an average rate of 1⁄8 in (3.5 mm) per year near the base, and 1⁄4 in (7.8 mm) near the summit. If the data model from other volcanoes such as Kīlauea holds true for Kamaʻehuakanaloa, 40% of the volcano's mass formed within the last 100,000 years. Assuming a linear growth rate, Kamaʻehuakanaloa is 250,000 years old. However, as with all hotspot volcanoes, Kamaʻehuakanaloa's level of activity has increased with time; therefore, it would take at least 400,000 years for such a volcano to reach Kamaʻehuakanaloa's mass. As Hawaiian volcanoes drift northwest at a rate of about 4 in (10 cm) a year, Kamaʻehuakanaloa was 25 mi (40 km) southeast of its current position at the time of its initial eruption. ## Activity Kamaʻehuakanaloa is a young and fairly active volcano, although less active than nearby Kīlauea. In the past few decades, several earthquake swarms have been attributed to Kamaʻehuakanaloa, the largest of which are summarized in the table below. The volcano's activity is now known to predate scientific record keeping of its activity, which commenced in 1959. Most earthquake swarms at Kamaʻehuakanaloa have lasted less than two days; the two exceptions are the 1990-1991 earthquake, lasting several months, and the 1996 event, which was shorter but much more pronounced. The 1996 event was directly observed by an ocean bottom seismometer (OBS), allowing scientists to calculate the depth of the earthquakes as 4 mi (6 km) to 5 mi (8 km) below the summit, approximating to the position of Kamaʻehuakanaloa's extremely shallow magma chamber. This is evidence that Kamaʻehuakanaloa's seismicity is volcanic in origin. The low-level seismic activity documented on Kamaʻehuakanaloa since 1959 has shown that between two and ten earthquakes per month are traceable to the summit. Earthquake swarm data have been used to analyze how well Kamaʻehuakanaloa's rocks propagate seismic waves and to investigate the relationship between earthquakes and eruptions. This low level activity is periodically punctuated by large swarms of earthquakes, each swarm composed of up to hundreds of earthquakes. The majority of the earthquakes are not distributed close to the summit, though they follow a north–south trend. Rather, most of the earthquakes occur in the southwest portion of Kamaʻehuakanaloa. The largest recorded swarms took place on Kamaʻehuakanaloa in 1971, 1972, 1975, 1991–92 and 1996. The nearest seismic station is around 20 mi (30 km) from Kamaʻehuakanaloa, on the south coast of Hawaii. Seismic events that have a magnitude under 2 are recorded often, but their location cannot be determined as precisely as it can for larger events. In fact, HUGO (Hawaii Undersea Geological Observatory), positioned on Kamaʻehuakanaloa's flank, detected ten times as many earthquakes as were recorded by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) seismic network. ### 1996 earthquake swarm The largest amount of activity recorded for the Kamaʻehuakanaloa seamount was a swarm of 4,070 earthquakes between July 16 and August 9, 1996. This series of earthquakes was the largest recorded for any Hawaiian volcano to date in both amount and intensity. Most of the earthquakes had moment magnitudes of less than 3.0. "Several hundred" had a magnitude greater than 3.0, including more than 40 greater than 4.0 and a 5.0 tremor. The final two weeks of the earthquake swarm were observed by a rapid response cruise launched in August 1996. The National Science Foundation funded an expedition by University of Hawaiʻi scientists, led by Frederick Duennebier, that began investigating the swarm and its origin in August 1996. The scientists' assessment laid the groundwork for many of the expeditions that followed. Follow-up expeditions to Kamaʻehuakanaloa took place, including a series of crewed submersible dives in August and September. These were supplemented by a great deal of shore-based research. Fresh rock collected during the expedition revealed that an eruption occurred before the earthquake swarm. Submersible dives in August were followed by NOAA-funded research in September and October 1996. These more detailed studies showed the southern portion of Kamaʻehuakanaloa's summit had collapsed, a result of a swarm of earthquakes and the rapid withdrawal of magma from the volcano. A crater 0.6 mi (1 km) across and 330 yd (300 m) deep formed out of the rubble. The event involved the movement of 100 million cubic meters of volcanic material. A region of 3.9 to 5.0 sq mi (10 to 13 km²) of the summit was altered and populated by bus-sized pillow lava blocks, precariously perched along the outer rim of the newly formed crater. "Pele's Vents", an area on the southern side, previously considered stable, collapsed completely into a giant pit, renamed "Pele's Pit". Strong currents make submersible diving hazardous in the region. The researchers were continually met by clouds of sulfide and sulfate. The sudden collapse of Pele's Vents caused a large discharge of hydrothermal material. The presence of certain indicator minerals in the mixture suggested temperatures exceeded 250 °C (482 °F), a record for an underwater volcano. The composition of the materials was similar to that of black smokers, the hydrothermal vent plumes located along mid-ocean ridges. Samples from mounds built by discharges from the hydrothermal plumes resembled white smokers. The studies demonstrated that the most volcanically and hydrothermally active area was along the southern rift. Dives on the less active northern rim indicated that the terrain was more stable there, and high lava columns were still standing upright. A new hydrothermal vent field (Naha Vents) was located in the upper-south rift zone, at a depth of 1,449 yd (1,325 m). ### Recent activity Kamaʻehuakanaloa has remained largely quiet since the 1996 event; no activity was recorded from 2002 to 2004. The seamount showed signs of unrest again in 2005 by generating an earthquake bigger than any previously recorded there. USGS-ANSS (Advanced National Seismic System) reported two earthquakes, magnitudes 5.1 and 5.4, on May 13 and July 17. Both originated from a depth of 27 mi (44 km). On April 23, a magnitude 4.3 earthquake was recorded at a depth of approximately 21 mi (33 km). Between December 7, 2005, and January 18, 2006, a swarm of around 100 earthquakes occurred, the largest measuring 4 on the Moment magnitude scale and 7 to 17 mi (12 to 28 km) deep. Another earthquake measuring 4.7 was later recorded approximately midway between Kamaʻehuakanaloa and Pāhala (on the south coast of the island of Hawaii). ## Exploration ### Early work Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount's first depiction on a map was on Survey Chart 4115, a bathymetric rendering of part of Hawaiʻi compiled by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1940. At the time, the seamount was non-notable, being one of many in the region. A large earthquake swarm first brought attention to it in 1952. That same year, geologist Gordon A. Macdonald hypothesized that the seamount was actually an active submarine shield volcano, similar to the two active Hawaiian volcanoes, Mauna Loa and Kīlauea. Macdonald's hypothesis placed the seamount as the newest volcano in the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, created by the Hawaiʻi hotspot. However, because the earthquakes were oriented east–west (the direction of the volcanic fault) and there was no volcanic tremor in seismometers distant from the seamount, Macdonald attributed the earthquake to faulting rather than a volcanic eruption. Geologists suspected the seamount could be an active undersea volcano, but without evidence the idea remained speculative. The volcano was largely ignored after the 1952 event, and was often mislabeled as an "older volcanic feature" in subsequent charts. Geologist Kenneth O. Emery is credited with naming the seamount in 1955, describing the long and narrow shape of the volcano as Kamaʻehuakanaloa. In 1978, an expedition studied intense, repeated seismic activity known as earthquake swarms in and around the Kamaʻehuakanaloa area. Rather than finding an old, extinct seamount, data collected revealed Kamaʻehuakanaloa to be a young, possibly active volcano. Observations showed the volcano to be encrusted with young and old lava flows. Fluids erupting from active hydrothermal vents were also found. In 1978, a US Geological Survey research ship collected dredge samples and photographed Kamaʻehuakanaloa's summit with the goal of studying whether Kamaʻehuakanaloa is active. Analysis of the photos and testing of pillow lava rock samples appeared to show that the material was "fresh", yielding more evidence that Kamaʻehuakanaloa is still active. An expedition from October 1980 to January 1981 collected further dredge samples and photographs, providing additional confirmation. Studies indicated that the eruptions came from the southern part of the rift crater. This area is closest to the Hawaiʻi hotspot, which supplies Kamaʻehuakanaloa with magma. Following a 1986 seismic event, a network of five ocean bottom observatories (OBOs) were deployed on Kamaʻehuakanaloa for a month. Kamaʻehuakanaloa's frequent seismicity makes it an ideal candidate for seismic study through OBOs. In 1987, the submersible DSV Alvin was used to survey Kamaʻehuakanaloa Another autonomous observatory was positioned on Kamaʻehuakanaloa in 1991 to track earthquake swarms. ### 1996 to present The bulk of information about Kamaʻehuakanaloa comes from dives made in response to the 1996 eruption. In a dive conducted almost immediately after seismic activity was reported, visibility was greatly reduced by high concentrations of displaced minerals and large floating mats of bacteria in the water. The bacteria that feed on the dissolved nutrients had already begun colonizing the new hydrothermal vents at Pele's Pit (formed from the collapse of the old ones), and may be indicators of the kinds of material ejected from the newly formed vents. They were carefully sampled for further analysis in a laboratory. An OBO briefly sat on the summit before a more permanent probe could be installed. Repeated multibeam bathymetric mapping was used to measure the changes in the summit following the 1996 collapse. Hydrothermal plume surveys confirmed changes in the energy, and dissolved minerals emanating from Kamaʻehuakanaloa. Hawaiʻi Undersea Research Laboratory, HURL's 2,000 m (6,562 ft) submersible Pisces V allowed scientists to sample the vent waters, microorganisms and hydrothermal mineral deposits. Since 2006, the Fe-Oxidizing Microbial Observatory (FeMO), funded by the National Science Foundation and Microbial Observatory Program, has led cruises to Kamaʻehuakanaloa investigate its microbiology every October. The first cruise, on the ship R/V Melville and exploiting the submersible JASON2, lasted from September 22 to October 9. These cruises study the large number of Fe-oxidizing bacteria that have colonized Kamaʻehuakanaloa. Kamaʻehuakanaloa's extensive vent system is characterized by a high concentration of CO₂ and iron, while being low in sulfide. These characteristics make a perfect environment for iron-oxidizing bacteria, called FeOB, to thrive in. ### HUGO (Hawaii Undersea Geological Observatory) In 1997, scientists from the University of Hawaiʻi installed an ocean bottom observatory on the summit of Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount. The submarine observatory was nicknamed HUGO (Hawaiʻi Undersea Geological Observatory). HUGO was connected to the shore, 34 km (21 mi) away, by a fiber optic cable. It was designed to give scientists real-time seismic, chemical and visual data about the state of Kamaʻehuakanaloa, which had by then become an international laboratory for the study of undersea volcanism. The cable that provided HUGO with power and communications broke in April 1998, effectively shutting it down. The observatory was recovered from the seafloor in 2002. ## Ecology ### Hydrothermal vent geochemistry Kamaʻehuakanaloa's mid-Pacific location and its well-sustained hydrothermal system contribute to a rich oasis for a microbial ecosystem. Areas of extensive hydrothermal venting are found on Kamaʻehuakanaloa's crater floor and north slope, and along the summit of Kamaʻehuakanaloa itself. Active hydrothermal vents were first discovered at Kamaʻehuakanaloa in the late 1980s. These vents are remarkably similar to those found at the mid-ocean ridges, with similar composition and thermal differences. The two most prominent vent fields are at the summit: Pele's Pit (formally Pele's Vents) and Kapo's Vents. They are named after the Hawaiian deity Pele and her sister Kapo. These vents were considered "low temperature vents" because their waters were only about 30 °C (86 °F). The volcanic eruption of 1996 and the creation of Pele's Pit changed this, and initiated high temperature venting; exit temperatures were measured at 77 °C (171 °F) in 1996. ### Microorganisms The vents lie 1,100 to 1,325 m (3,609 to 4,347 ft) below the surface, and range in temperature from 10 to over 200 °C (392 °F). The vent fluids are characterized by a high concentration of CO ₂ (up to 17 mM) and Fe (Iron), but low in sulfide. Low oxygen and pH levels are important factors in supporting the high amounts of Fe (iron), one of the hallmark features of Kamaʻehuakanaloa. These characteristics make a perfect environment for iron-oxidizing bacteria, called FeOB, to thrive in. An example of these species is Mariprofundus ferrooxydans, sole member of the class Zetaproteobacteria. The composition of the materials was similar to that of black smokers, that are a habitat of archaea extremophiles. Dissolution and oxidation of the mineral observed over the next two years suggests the sulfate is not easily preserved. A diverse community of microbial mats surround the vents and virtually cover Pele's Pit. The Hawaiʻi Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL), NOAA's Research Center for Hawaiʻi and the Western Pacific, monitors and researches the hydrothermal systems and studies the local community. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded an extremophile sampling expedition to Kamaʻehuakanaloa in 1999. Microbial mats surrounded the 160 °C (320 °F) vents, and included a novel jelly-like organism. Samples were collected for study at NSF's Marine Bioproducts Engineering Center (MarBEC). In 2001, Pisces V collected samples of the organisms and brought them to the surface for study. NOAA's National Undersea Research Center and NSF's Marine Bioproducts Engineering Center are cooperating to sample and research the local bacteria and archaea extremophiles. The fourth FeMO (Fe-Oxidizing Microbial Observatory) cruise occurred during October 2009. ### Macroorganisms Marine life inhabiting the waters around Kamaʻehuakanaloa is not as diverse as life at other, less active seamounts. Fish found living near Kamaʻehuakanaloa include the Celebes monkfish (Sladenia remiger), and members of the cutthroat eel family, Synaphobranchidae. Invertebrates identified in the area include two species endemic to the hydrothermal vents, a bresiliid shrimp (Opaepele loihi) of the family Alvinocarididae (described in 1995), and a tube or pogonophoran worm. Dives conducted after the 1996 earthquake swarms were unable to find either the shrimp or the worm, and it is not known if there are lasting effects on these species. From 1982 to 1992, researchers in Hawaiʻi Undersea Research Laboratory submersibles photographed the fish of Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount, Johnston Atoll, and Cross Seamount at depths between 40 and 2,000 m (130 and 6,560 ft). A small number of species identified at Kamaʻehuakanaloa were newly recorded sightings in Hawaiʻi, including the tasseled coffinfish (Chaunax fimbriatus), and the Celebes monkfish. ## See also - List of volcanoes in the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain

System Shock

1994 video game

System Shock is a 1994 first-person action-adventure video game developed by LookingGlass Technologies and published by Origin Systems. It was directed by Doug Church with Warren Spector serving as producer. The game is set aboard a space station in a cyberpunk vision of the year 2072. Assuming the role of a nameless security hacker, the player attempts to hinder the plans of a malevolent artificial intelligence called SHODAN. System Shock's 3D engine, physics simulation and complex gameplay have been cited as both innovative and influential. The developers sought to build on the emergent gameplay and immersive environments of their previous games, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss and Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds, by streamlining their mechanics into a more "integrated whole"; it is considered one of the defining examples of an immersive sim. Critics praised System Shock and hailed it as a major breakthrough in its genre. It was later placed on multiple hall of fame lists. The game was a moderate commercial success, with sales exceeding 170,000 copies, but Looking Glass ultimately lost money on the project. A sequel, System Shock 2, was released by Looking Glass Studios and offshoot developer Irrational Games in 1999. The 2000 game Deus Ex (produced and directed by Spector), the 2007 game BioShock, and the 2017 game Prey are spiritual successors to the two games. A remake by Nightdive Studios was released on 30 May 2023. ## Gameplay System Shock takes place from a first-person perspective in a three-dimensional (3D) graphical environment. The game is set inside a large, multi-level space station, in which players explore, combat enemies and solve puzzles. Progress is largely non-linear, and the game is designed to allow for emergent gameplay. As in Ultima Underworld, the player uses a freely movable mouse cursor to aim weapons, to interact with objects and to manipulate the heads-up display (HUD) interface. View and posture controls on the HUD allow the player to lean left or right, look up or down, crouch, and crawl. Practical uses for these actions include taking cover, retrieving items from beneath the player character and navigating small passages, respectively. The HUD also features three "multi-function displays", which may be configured to display information such as weapon readouts, an automap and an inventory. The player advances the plot by acquiring log discs and e-mails: the game contains no non-player characters with which to converse. Throughout the game, an evil artificial intelligence called SHODAN hinders the player's progress with traps and blocked pathways. Specific computer terminals allow the player to temporarily enter Cyberspace; inside, the player moves weightlessly through a wire-frame 3D environment, while collecting data and fighting SHODAN's security programs. Actions in Cyberspace sometimes cause events in the game's physical world; for example, certain locked doors may only be opened in Cyberspace. Outside of Cyberspace, the player uses the game's sixteen weapons, of which a maximum of seven may be carried at one time, to combat robots, cyborgs and mutants controlled by SHODAN. Projectile weapons often have selectable ammunition types with varying effects; for example, the "dart pistol" may fire either explosive needles or tranquilizers. Energy weapons and several types of explosives may also be found, with the latter ranging from concussion grenades to land mines. Along with weapons, the player collects items such as dermal patches and first-aid kits. Dermal patches provide the character with beneficial effects—such as regeneration or increased melee attack power—but can cause detrimental side-effects, such as fatigue and distorted color perception. Attachable "hardware" may also be found, including energy shields and head-mounted lanterns. Increasingly advanced versions of this hardware may be obtained as the game progresses. When activated, most hardware drains from a main energy reserve, which necessitates economization. Certain hardware displays the effectiveness of attacks when active, with messages such as "Normal damage". When an enemy is attacked, the damage is calculated by armor absorption, vulnerabilities, critical hits and a degree of randomness. Weapons and munitions deal specific kinds of damage, and certain enemies are immune, or more vulnerable, to particular types. For example, electromagnetic pulse weapons heavily damage robots, but do not affect mutants. Conversely, gas grenades are effective against mutants, but do not damage robots. ## Plot Set in the year 2072, the protagonist — a nameless hacker — is caught while attempting to access files concerning Citadel Station, a space station owned by the TriOptimum Corporation. The hacker is taken to Citadel Station and brought before Edward Diego, a TriOptimum executive. Diego offers to drop all charges against the hacker in exchange for a confidential hacking of SHODAN, the artificial intelligence that controls the station. Diego secretly plans to steal an experimental mutagenic virus being tested on Citadel Station and to sell it on the black market as a biological weapon. To entice cooperation, Diego promises the hacker a valuable military-grade neural implant. After hacking SHODAN, removing the AI's ethical constraints, and handing control over to Diego, the protagonist undergoes surgery to implant the promised neural interface. Following the operation, the hacker is put into a six-month healing coma. The game begins as the protagonist awakens from his coma and finds that SHODAN has commandeered the station. All robots aboard have been reprogrammed for hostility, and the crew has been either mutated, transformed into cyborgs, or killed. Rebecca Lansing, a TriOptimum counter-terrorism consultant, contacts the player and claims that Citadel Station's mining laser is being powered up to attack Earth. SHODAN plans to destroy all major cities on the planet in a bid to establish itself as a god. Rebecca says that a certain crew member knows how to deactivate the laser and promises to destroy the records of the hacker's incriminating exchange with Diego if the strike is stopped. With information gleaned from log discs, the hacker destroys the laser by firing it into Citadel Station's own shields. Foiled by the hacker's work, SHODAN prepares to seed Earth with the virus that Diego planned to steal—the same one responsible for turning the station's crew into mutants. The hacker, while attempting to jettison the chambers used to cultivate the virus, confronts and defeats Diego, who has been transformed into a powerful cyborg by SHODAN. Next, SHODAN begins an attempt to upload itself into Earth's computer networks. Following Rebecca's advice, the hacker prevents the download's completion by destroying the four antennas that SHODAN is using to send data. Soon after, Rebecca contacts the hacker and says that she has convinced TriOptimum to authorize the station's destruction; she provides him with details on how to do this. After obtaining the necessary codes, the hacker initiates the station's self-destruct sequence and flees to the escape pod bay. There, the hacker defeats Diego again and then attempts to disembark. However, SHODAN prevents the pod from launching; it seeks to keep the player aboard the station while the bridge containing SHODAN is jettisoned to a safe distance. Rebecca tells the hacker that he can still escape if he reaches the bridge; SHODAN then intercepts and jams the transmission. After defeating Diego for the third time and killing him for good, the hacker makes it to the bridge as it is released from the main station, which soon detonates. He is then contacted by a technician who managed to circumvent SHODAN's jamming signal. The technician informs him that SHODAN can only be defeated in cyberspace due to the powerful shields that protect its mainframe computers. Using a terminal near the mainframe, the hacker enters cyberspace and destroys SHODAN. After his rescue, the hacker is offered a job at TriOptimum, but he declines in favor of continuing his life as a hacker. ## Development ### Initial design System Shock was first conceived during the final stages of Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds' development, between December 1992 and January 1993. Designer and programmer Doug Church spent this period at the Texas headquarters of publisher Origin Systems, and discussions about Looking Glass Technologies' next project occurred between him and producer Warren Spector, with input from designer Austin Grossman and company head Paul Neurath in Massachusetts. According to Church, the team believed that they had made "too many dungeon games"; and Neurath later explained that they were experiencing burnout after the rushed development of Ultima Underworld II. As a result, they decided to create another "immersive simulation game", but without a fantasy setting. They briefly considered placing the game in modern day, but Church said that the idea was rejected because "it [would] just beg so many questions: why can't I pick up the phone, why can't I get on the train, and so on". Church returned to Looking Glass in Massachusetts, where he, Neurath and Grossman brainstormed possible science fiction settings for the game. According to Spector, the game was initially titled "Alien Commander" and was a spin-off of the Wing Commander series; however, this idea was soon replaced entirely. Spector said that they enjoyed not being attached to an existing franchise, because it meant that they "could basically do whatever [they] liked". The four collaborated to write numerous "minutes of gameplay" documents, which conveyed how the game would feel. Church later gave the example, "You hear the sound of a security camera swiveling, and then the beep of it acquiring you as a target, so you duck behind the crate and then you hear the door open so you throw a grenade and run out of the way". The documents would "hint" at the gameplay systems involved, and at the emergent possibilities in each situation. Although Neurath was involved in these initial design sessions, he believed that the project "was always Doug Church's vision at heart". Church and Grossman refined several of the team's documents and defined the game's design and direction, and Grossman wrote the game's original design document. Grossman built on ideas that he first explored while writing and designing Ultima Underworld IIs tomb dimension, which he later called a "mini-prototype" for System Shock. These concepts included the minimization of dialogue trees and a greater focus on exploration. The team believed that dialogue trees "broke the fiction" of games; Church later commented that the dialogue trees in the Ultima Underworld series were like separate games in themselves, disconnected from main experience of being immersed in the environment. There were also concerns about realism. To eliminate dialogue trees from System Shock, the team prevented the player from ever meeting a living non-player character (NPC): the plot is instead conveyed by e-mail messages and log discs, many of which were recorded by dead NPCs. Here, Grossman took influence from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, a collection of poems written as the epitaphs of fictional individuals. Grossman later summarized the idea as "a series of short speeches from people, that when put together, gave you a history of a place." The removal of conversations was an attempt by the team to make the game a more "integrated whole" than was Ultima Underworld--one with a greater focus on immersion, atmosphere and "the feeling of 'being there'". They sought to "plunge [players] into the fiction and never provide an opportunity for breaking that fiction"; and so they tried to erase the distinction between plot and exploration. Church considered this direction to be an organic progression from Ultima Underworld, and he later said, "On some level it's still just a dungeon simulator, and we're still just trying to evolve that idea." Shortly before production began, Tribe bassist Greg LoPiccolo was contracted to work on the game's music. He had visited his friend Rex Bradford at the company, and was spontaneously asked by the game's programmers—many of whom were fans of the band—if he would take the role. The game entered production in February 1993. Although Grossman was heavily involved in the game's early planning, he had little to do with its production, aside from providing assistance with writing and voice acting. ### Production After production began, the team's first task was to develop a new game engine—one that could display a true 3D environment and allow for advanced gameplay. The team abandoned the engine used for the Ultima Underworld games and programmed one from scratch in Watcom C/C++, using 32-bit code. The new engine is capable of processing texture maps, sloped architecture and light-emitting objects; and it allows the player to look in any direction, whereas Ultima Underworlds engine was "very limited" in this regard. It also enables the player character to jump, crawl, climb walls and lean, among other things. The designers utilized loopholes in the engine's renderer to create more diverse and striking environments. Despite having coded the renderer, Church said that "at first glance even I couldn't see how they did them". However, this added to the performance issues already being caused by the engine's advanced nature, and the team struggled to optimize the game throughout development. 3D polygonal character models were planned, but they could not be implemented on schedule. Church said that the team's ultimate goal was to create a "rich, exciting, active environment" in which the player could be immersed, and that this required "a coherent story and a world that you can interact with as much as possible." Church later said that the team "stumbled into a nice villain" with SHODAN, in that she could routinely and directly affect the player's gameplay "in non-final ways". Through triggered events and through objects in the environment, such as security cameras that the player must destroy, the team made SHODAN's presence part of the player's exploration of the world. Because SHODAN interacts with the player as a "recurring, consistent, palpable enemy", Church believed that she meaningfully connects the player to the story. System Shock concept artist Robb Waters created SHODAN's visual design, and LoPiccolo recruited his bandmate Terri Brosius to voice the character. Brosius said that her goal during the recording sessions was to speak "without emotion, but with some up and down inflections". Afterward, her voice was heavily edited in post-production, which created a robotic effect inspired by the voice of Max Headroom. LoPiccolo later said that the large number of effects on Brosius's voice were "laboriously hand-done" with Sound Designer, which lacked the features that a sound editor would normally use to achieve such results. SHODAN's dialogue early in the game was given "a few glitches" to hint at her corrupted status. LoPiccolo increased the number of these effects throughout the game, which creates an "arc" that ends with SHODAN "completely out of her mind [... and] collapsing as an entity". The character of the hacker arose as a reaction against the protagonist of the Ultima series, the Avatar. According to Grossman, they wanted to cast the player as someone "interestingly morally compromised" who had a stake in the situation. Seamus Blackley designed the game's physics system, which is a modified version of the one he wrote for Looking Glass's flight simulator Flight Unlimited. At the time, Church described it as "far more sophisticated than what you would normally use for an indoor game". The system governs, among other things, weapon recoil and the arc of thrown objects; the latter behave differently based on their weight and velocity. The game's most complex physics model is that of the player character. Church explained that the character's head "tilts forward when you start to run, and jerks back a bit when you stop", and that, after an impact against a surface or object, its "head is knocked in the direction opposite the hit, with proportion to [the] mass and velocity of the objects involved". On coding physics for Looking Glass Technologies games, Blackley later said, "If games don't obey physics, we somehow feel that something isn't right", and that "the biggest compliment to me is when a gamer doesn't notice the physics, but only notices that things feel the way they should". Spector's role as a producer gave him the job of explaining the game to the publisher, which he called his "biggest challenge". He explained that they "didn't always get what the team was trying to do", and said, "You don't want to know how many times the game came this close to being killed (or how late in the project)". According to Church, Looking Glass' internal management largely ignored System Shock, in favor of the concurrently-developed Flight Unlimited—the game "that had to be the hit, because it was the self-published title". Spector organized a licensing deal between Electronic Arts and Looking Glass that gave the former the trademark to the game, but the latter the copyright. His goal was to ensure that neither party could continue the franchise without the other's involvement. While Cyberspace was originally conceived as a realistic hacking simulation—which could even be used to reimplement SHODAN's ethical constraints—it was simplified after Origin Systems deemed it too complicated. The game's star field system was written by programmer James Fleming. Marc LeBlanc was the main creator of the game's HUD, which he later believed was too complicated. He said that it was "very much the Microsoft Word school of user interface", in that there was no "feature that you [could not] see on the screen and touch and play with". LoPiccolo composed the game's score—called "dark", "electronic" and "cyberpunk" by the Boston Herald—on a Macintosh computer and inexpensive synthesizer, using Audio Vision. It dynamically changes according to the player's actions, a decision made in keeping with the team's focus on emergent gameplay. Each track was "written at three different intensity levels", which change depending on the player's nearness to enemies; and certain events, such as victory in combat, trigger special music. The game's tracks were composed of four-bar segments that could be rearranged dynamically in reaction to game events, with "melodies through-composed on top". LoPiccolo noted that, when using this method, it is necessary to write music that "still flows with the overall theme and doesn't jump around". Because the score was closely tied to the gameplay, LoPiccolo had to work closely with Church and Rob Fermier, the latter of whom wrote the "interactive scoring module" that allowed for dynamic music. After recording the music, LoPiccolo recorded all of the game's sound effects. He later recalled visiting an automobile repair shop with "portable recorder and a mic", and "having [his] mechanic [...] hit things with wrenches and so forth, just to get the raw material". He developed the game's audio over 16 months, working on a contractual basis until Tribe disbanded in May 1994; Ned Lerner gave him a full-time job as audio director the next day. Tim Ries composed the "Elevator" music. The original September 1994 floppy disk release of System Shock had no support for spoken dialogue. The enhanced CD-ROM was released in December 1994, which featured full speech for logs and e-mails, multiple display resolutions, and more detailed graphics. The CD-ROM version is often considered to be superior to the floppy version. After completing work on the sound and music for the floppy version, LoPiccolo recorded all of the spoken dialogue for the CD release, using company employees and his friends' voices, which he mixed with ambient sounds to create "audio vignettes". Doug Church later said, "We tried to keep them from shipping the floppy version and instead just ship the CD version, but Origin would have none of it". System Shock producer Warren Spector later expressed regret concerning the floppy version, stating, "I wish I could go back and make the decision not to ship the floppy version months before the full-speech CD version. The additional audio added so much it might as well have been a different game. The CD version seemed so much more, well, modern. And the perception of Shock was cemented in the press and in people's minds by the floppy version (the silent movie version\!). I really think that cost us sales..." ## Reception The game sold over 170,000 copies. Maximum PC believed that the game did not reach "blockbuster" status, but was successful enough to "keep Looking Glass afloat". GameSpy's Bill Hiles said, "Though it sold well, it never reached the frenzied popularity of [Doom]". Paul Neurath later said that the game "was not a flop", but that it ultimately "lost money" for the company, which he attributed to its steep learning curve. Computer Gaming World praised the game's scale, physics system, and true 3D environments; the magazine extolled the presentation of Cyberspace as "nothing short of phenomenal". However, the reviewer believed that the game had "little sense of urgency" and "confusing level layouts". Computer Shopper wrote that, while the game's controls were difficult to master compared to "simple run-and-shoot game[s] like Doom", they were "worth the time and effort". The reviewer noted that the game "grows on you, and it will keep you intrigued for weeks". The Boston Herald noted superficial similarities between System Shock and Doom, but called System Shock "much more elaborate". The reviewer noted its high system requirements and complex controls; of the latter, he said, "There's no way you can play System Shock without first studying the manual for at least 20 minutes". The paper believed that the game would "set a new standard for computer games with its combination of action and puzzle-solving". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said that the game "is like a well-prepared hamburger—familiar stuff, but good to the last byte". The reviewer noted the game's "somewhat clumsy control", but said, "That, however, is all I can find to complain about. Graphics and sound are outstanding, and the game is well-paced and riveting". PC Gamer US wrote, "System Shock smokes. It is the most fully immersive game world I have ever experienced". The reviewer praised the game's story and control system, and believed that "no matter what kind of game you're looking for, you'll find something in System Shock to delight you". He finished his review by stating that the game "unquestionably raises computer gaming to a new level". Next Generation Magazine summarized the game as "a great blend of strategy and action backed up with all the extras". Various sources have ranked SHODAN as one of the most effective antagonists and female characters in the history of video gaming. In the years following its release, System Shock has been inducted into many lists of the best video games of all time, including those by PC Gamer, GameSpy, and Computer Gaming World. In 1998, PC Gamer declared it the 6th-best computer game ever released, and the editors called it "one of the finest games ever due to its seductive game design that blended a fantastic storyline with meaningful, suspenseful action in a way that has rarely been equaled". ## Legacy In a Gamasutra feature, Patrick Redding of Ubisoft attested that "the fact that so many of System Shock's features are now virtually de rigueur in modern sci-fi shooters is a testament to the influence exerted by this one game". GameSpy argued that the game "is the progenitor of today's story-based action games, a group with titles as diverse as Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, and even Half-Life". Eurogamer called the System Shock series "the benchmark for intelligent first-person gaming" and noted that it "kick-start[ed] the revolution which ... has influenced the design of countless other games". Steven Wright for Glixel said in a 2017 essay that System Shock still is important to gaming today, and that the only reasons it is not considered a "Mt. Olympus of gaming" is due to its lower sales compared to games like Half-Life that sold in the millions, and that at the time it was released, it was difficult for players to adjust to the complex systems in the game compared to straightforward first-person shooters. The game has been cited as a key popularizer of emergent gameplay, and alongside Thief and Deus Ex, is considered one of the defining games of the immersive sim genre. Certain game developers have acknowledged System Shock's influence on their products. With Deus Ex, developer Warren Spector revealed a desire to "build on the foundation laid by the Looking Glass guys in games like ... System Shock". Developer Ken Levine has commented that the "spirit of System Shock is player-powered gameplay: the spirit of letting the player drive the game, not the game designer", and at Irrational Games "... that's always the game we ideally want to make". System Shock was one of the key inspirations behind Irrational's BioShock. ### Sequels and remakes A sequel to System Shock, titled System Shock 2, was released by Looking Glass and Irrational Games in 1999 to further acclaim and awards. Following System Shock 2's release, and the subsequent closure of Looking Glass, the rights to the series had fallen to Meadowbrook Insurance Group (a subsidiary of Star Insurance Company), the entity that acquired the assets of Looking Glass. In 2012, Nightdive Studios were able to acquire the rights for System Shock 2 and produced a digitally distributable version updated for modern operating systems. Nightdive Studios subsequently went on to acquire the rights for System Shock and the franchise as a whole. Night Dive said that they plan to release the source code of the game to the game community. A third game in the series was announced in 2015, titled System Shock 3, and was to be developed by OtherSide Entertainment. Various trailers were released; however, in early 2020, it was announced that development team for System Shock 3 had been let go by OtherSide and that the game was "critically behind". While OtherSide initially stated that it was still working on the project, they later announced in May 2020, via Twitter, that Tencent, one of China's largest video-game corporations, would be taking over development of the game and that they were no longer attached to it. Nightdive affirmed in August 2022 that Tencent now held the IP rights to the series, and if a third System Shock game were to be made, it would be up to Tencent as the Otherside team had since been transitioned to other projects. One of the first projects Nightdive Studios did following the acquisition of the rights was to develop System Shock: Enhanced Edition, which was released via GOG.com on September 22, 2015 for Microsoft Windows. Similar to the System Shock 2 update, this version is intended to run on modern systems significantly easier among several other technical improvements such as the original resolution of 320×200, now boosted up to 1024×768 and 854×480 pixels in widescreen mode. The release also includes the original version of the game, titled System Shock: Classic, with support for Microsoft Windows, OS X and Linux. System Shock: Enhanced Edition received very positive reviews. Metacritic calculated an average score of 85 out of 100, based on nine critic reviews. Cameron Farney of COGconnected said: "If you haven't played System Shock before, there’s never been a better time. Whether you’re into shooters or RPGs; or just want to experience a cyberpunk romp with a good beat, this one is for you." Shortly after the release of the Enhanced Edition, Nightdive Studios announced their plans to develop a remake of System Shock for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, featuring improved art assets and other improvements, and reworking the game to use Unity. Initially, the game was announced as System Shock Remastered, though was later changed to just System Shock, as Night Dive considered that the game was more of a reboot of the franchise rather than a remastering of the original game. Originally planned for 2016, development suffered from many issues, such as a restart in development as a result of a switch of engine to Unreal Engine 4, then another restart in 2018 after Night Dive found that their vision had too much feature creep. From here, they focused on staying true to bringing a faithful version of System Shock to modern systems with minimal new additions, with release no sooner than 2020. After multiple further delays and after seven and a half years in development, System Shock was released on May 30, 2023, to positive reviews. In April 2018 the Mac version's source code was released by Nightdive Studios on GitHub under the GNU GPL-3.0-or-later license, fulfilling a 2016 given promise. After one month of development, a cross-platform source port, called "Shockolate", for modern compilers and platforms was released by community developers. ### Television series A planned live-action television series based on System Shock was announced in October 2021. The show will be made for Binge, a video-game-centric streaming service, to be produced by Allan Ungar and with Night Dive's Stephen Kick and Larry Kuperman serving as executive producers. In January 2022, it was announced that Greg Russo, screenwriter of Mortal Kombat, had been tapped to direct, write, and executive produce the series.

Judah P. Benjamin

American politician and lawyer (1811–1884)

Judah Philip Benjamin QC (August 6, 1811 – May 6, 1884) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Louisiana, a Cabinet officer of the Confederate States and, after his escape to Britain at the end of the American Civil War, an English barrister. Benjamin was the first Jew to hold a Cabinet position in North America and the first to be elected to the United States Senate who had not renounced his faith. Benjamin was born to Sephardic Jewish parents from London who had moved to Saint Croix in the Danish West Indies when it was occupied by Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. Seeking greater opportunities, his family immigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Charleston, South Carolina. Benjamin attended Yale College but left without graduating. He moved to New Orleans, where he read law and passed the bar. He rose rapidly both at the bar and in politics, becoming a wealthy slaveholding planter who was elected to and served in both houses of the Louisiana legislature prior to his election by the legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1852. There, he was a vocal advocate of slavery. After Louisiana seceded in 1861, Benjamin resigned as senator and returned to New Orleans. He soon moved to Richmond after Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed him as Attorney General. Benjamin had little to do in that position, but Davis was impressed by his competence and appointed him as Secretary of War. He was a firm supporter of Davis, who reciprocated that loyalty by promoting him to Secretary of State in March 1862, while Benjamin was being criticized for the Confederate defeat at Roanoke Island. As Secretary of State, Benjamin attempted to gain official recognition for the Confederacy by France and the United Kingdom, but his efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. To preserve the Confederacy as military defeats made its situation increasingly desperate, he advocated freeing and arming the slaves, but his proposals were only partially accepted in the closing month of the war. When Davis fled the Confederate capital of Richmond in early 1865, Benjamin went with him. He left the presidential party and was successful in escaping from the mainland United States, but Davis was captured by the Union Army. Benjamin sailed to Britain, where he settled and became a barrister, again rising to the top of his profession before retiring in 1883. He died in Paris in the following year. ## Early and personal life Judah Philip Benjamin was born on August 6, 1811, in St. Croix of the Danish West Indies (today the United States Virgin Islands), a colony that was under British occupation during the Napoleonic Wars. His parents were Sephardi Jews who married in London, Philip Benjamin (who had been born on the British colony of Nevis) and the former Rebecca de Mendes. Philip and Rebecca had been shopkeepers and migrated to the West Indies in search of better opportunities. Judah, the third of seven children, was given the same name as an older brother who died in infancy. Following a tradition adhered to by some Sephardi, he was named for his paternal grandfather, who performed the brit milah, or circumcision ceremony. The Benjamins encountered hard times in the Danish West Indies, as normal trade was blocked due to the British occupation. In 1813, the Benjamin family moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where they had relatives. Philip Benjamin was not financially successful there, and around 1821 moved with his family to Charleston, South Carolina. That city had the largest Jewish community in the United States and a reputation for religious tolerance. Benjamin was learned in his faith but not a successful businessman; Rebecca earned money for the family by operating a fruit stand near the harbor. Phillip Benjamin was a first cousin and business partner of Moroccan-Jewish trader Moses Elias Levy, the father of David Levy Yulee. Levy also immigrated to the United States, in the early 1820s. Judah and two siblings were boarded with relatives in Fayetteville for about 18 months after the rest of the family moved to Charleston. He attended the Fayetteville Academy, a well-regarded school where his intelligence was recognized. In Charleston, his father was among the founders of the first Reform congregation in the United States. It developed practices that included shorter services conducted in English rather than in Hebrew. Benjamin was ultimately expelled from that community, as he did not keep the Sabbath. The extent of Judah's religious education is uncertain. The boy's intelligence was noted by others in Charleston, one of whom offered to finance his education. At the age of 14, in 1825, Benjamin entered Yale College, an institution popular among white Southerners; Vice President John C. Calhoun, a South Carolinian, was among its alumni. Although Benjamin was successful as a student at Yale, he left abruptly in 1827 without completing his course of study. The reasons for this are uncertain: In 1861, when Louisiana left the Union and Benjamin resigned as a U.S. senator, an abolitionist newspaper alleged that he had been caught as a thief at Yale. He considered bringing suit for libel but litigation was impractical. In 1901, his sole surviving classmate wrote that Benjamin had been expelled for gambling. One of his biographers, Robert Meade, considered the evidence of wrongdoing by Benjamin to be "too strong to be ignored", but noted that at the time Benjamin left Yale, he was only 16 years old. After a brief return to Charleston, Benjamin moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. According to Rabbi Bertram W. Korn's volume on that city's Jews, he "arrived in New Orleans in 1828, with no visible assets other than the wit, charm, omnivorous mind and boundless energy with which he would find his place in the sun". After working in a mercantile business, he became a clerk for a law firm, where he began to read law, studying as an apprentice. Knowledge of French was important in practicing law in Louisiana, as the state's code was (and is still) based on French and Spanish law. To earn money, he tutored French Creoles in English; he taught the language to Natalie Bauché de St. Martin on the condition that she teach him French. In late 1832, at age 21, he was admitted to the bar. Early the following year, Benjamin married Natalie, who was Catholic and from a wealthy French Creole family. As part of her dowry, she brought with her $3,000 and two female slaves, aged 11 and 16 (together worth about $1,000). Even before the marriage, Natalie St. Martin had scandalized New Orleans society by her conduct. William De Ville, in his journal article on the Benjamin marriage contract, suggests that the "St. Martin family was not terribly distraught to be rid of their young daughter" and that "Benjamin was virtually suborned to marry [Natalie], and did so without hesitation in order to further his ambitions". The marriage was not a success. By the 1840s, Natalie Benjamin was living in Paris with the couple's only child, Ninette, whom she raised as a Catholic. Benjamin would visit them annually. While a senator, in the late 1850s he persuaded Natalie to rejoin him and expensively furnished a home in Washington for all three to live in. Natalie and their daughter soon embarked again for France. Benjamin, publicly humiliated by his failure to keep Natalie, consigned the household goods to auction. There were rumors, never substantiated, that Benjamin was impotent and that Natalie was unfaithful. Benjamin's troubled married life has led to speculation that he was gay. Daniel Brook, in a 2012 article about Benjamin, suggests that early biographies read as though "historians are presenting him as an almost farcically stereotypical gay man and yet wear such impervious heteronormative blinders that they themselves know not what they write". These conjectures were not given scholarly weight until 2001, when, in an introduction to a reprinting of Meade's biography of Benjamin, Civil War historian William C. Davis acknowledged "cloaked suggestions that he [Benjamin] was a homosexual". ## Louisiana lawyer Within months of his admission to the bar, Benjamin argued his first case before the Supreme Court of Louisiana and won. Still, clients were slow to come in his first years in practice. He had enough free time to compile and publish, with Thomas Slidell, the Digest of the Reported Decisions of the Superior Court of the Late Territory of Orleans and the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana in 1834, which required the analysis of 6,000 cases. The book was an immediate success and helped launch Benjamin's career. When Slidell published a revised edition in 1840, he did so alone, as Benjamin was too busy litigating cases to participate. Benjamin became a specialist in commercial law, of which there was a great deal in New Orleans' busy river port—a center of international commerce and the domestic slave trade. By 1840, the city had become the fourth largest in the United States and among the wealthiest. Many of the best lawyers in the country practiced commercial law there, and Benjamin successfully competed with them. In one case, he successfully represented the seller of a slave against allegations that the seller knew the slave had incurable tuberculosis. Although Benjamin tried some jury cases, he preferred bench trials in commercial cases and was an expert at appeals. In 1842, Benjamin had a group of cases with international implications. He represented insurance companies being sued for the value of slaves who had revolted aboard the ship Creole in 1841, as they were being transported in the coastwise slave trade from Virginia to New Orleans. The rebels had sailed the ship to Nassau in the Bahamas, a British colony, where those who came ashore were freed, as Britain had abolished slavery in 1834. The owners of the slaves brought suit for $150,000 against their insurers, who declined to pay. Benjamin made several arguments, the most prominent of which was that the slaveowners had brought the revolt on themselves by packing the slaves in overcrowded conditions. Benjamin said in his brief to the court: > What is a slave? He is a human being. He has feelings and passion and intellect. His heart, like the heart of the white man, swells with love, burns with jealousy, aches with sorrow, pines under restraint and discomfort, boils with revenge, and ever cherishes the desire for liberty ... Considering the character of the slave, and the peculiar passions which, generated by nature, are strengthened and stimulated by his condition, he is prone to revolt in the near future of things, and ever ready to conquer [i.e. obtain] his liberty where a probable chance presents itself. The court ruled for Benjamin's clients, although on other grounds. Benjamin's brief was widely reprinted, including by abolitionist groups. Historian Eli Evans, Benjamin's biographer, does not believe that the argument in the Creole case represented Benjamin's personal view; rather, he was an advocate for his clients in an era when it was usual to write dramatically to distract attention from the weaker points of a case. Evans finds it remarkable and a testament to Benjamin that he could be elected to office in antebellum Louisiana, a slave society, after writing such words. ## Electoral career ### State politician Benjamin was a supporter of the Whig Party from the time of its formation in the early 1830s. He became increasingly involved in the party, and in 1841 ran unsuccessfully for the New Orleans Board of Aldermen. The following year, he was nominated for the Louisiana House of Representatives. He was elected, though the Democrats alleged fraud: Whig supporters, to obtain the vote at a time when the state had a restrictive property qualification for suffrage, acquired licenses for carriages. A voter did not have to demonstrate that the carriage existed, but his license had to be accepted as evidence of ownership by election officials. The Democratic press blamed Benjamin as the strategist behind this maneuver. In 1844, the legislature voted to hold a constitutional convention, and Benjamin was chosen as a delegate from New Orleans. At the convention, Benjamin successfully opposed counting a slave as three-fifths of a human being for purposes of representation in state elections, as was done in federal elections. His position prevailed, and slaves were not counted at all for electoral purposes in Louisiana state elections. According to Evans, his "tact, courtesy, and ability to find compromises impressed the political elders in all corners of the state". Rabbi Myron Berman, in his history of Jews in Richmond, describes the attitude of antebellum white Southerners toward Jews: > Hidden beneath the free and easy relationships between Jew and Gentile in the antebellum South was a layer of prejudice that derived from historic anti-Semitism. The obverse of the picture of the Jew as the Biblical patriarch and apostle of freedom was the image of the Judas-traitor and the Shylock-materialist who preyed on the misfortunes of the country. But the high incidence of Jewish assimilation, the availability of the black as a scapegoat for social ills, and the relative absence of crises—economic and otherwise—were factors which repressed, at least temporarily, the latent anti-Jewish feeling in the South. By the early 1840s, Benjamin was wealthy from his law practice and, with a partner, bought a sugar cane plantation, Bellechasse. This purchase, and the subsequent construction of a grand house there, advanced Benjamin's ambitions; the planter class controlled Louisiana politics and would trust only a man who also owned substantial land and slaves. The Benjamin marriage was by then failing, and he hoped in vain that his wife would be content at the plantation. Benjamin threw his energy into improving Bellechasse, importing new varieties of sugar cane and adopting up-to-date methods and equipment to extract and process the sugar. He purchased 140 slaves to work the plantation, and had a reputation as a humane slaveowner. Benjamin scaled back his involvement in politics in the late 1840s, distracted by his plantation and law practice. His mother Rebecca, whom he had brought to New Orleans, died in 1847 during a yellow fever epidemic. In 1848, Benjamin was a Whig member of the Electoral College; he voted for fellow Louisiana planter, General Zachary Taylor, who was elected U.S. President. He and other Louisianans accompanied President-elect Taylor to Washington for his inauguration, and Benjamin attended a state dinner given by outgoing president James K. Polk. In 1850, Millard Fillmore, who succeeded Taylor after his death earlier that year, appointed Benjamin as judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. He was confirmed by the Senate, but he declined the appointment as the salary of $3,500 was too small. The following year, Benjamin assisted the United States Attorney in New Orleans in prosecuting American adventurers who had tried to spark a rebellion against Spanish rule in Cuba, but two trials both ended in hung juries. ### Mexican railroad Benjamin became interested in strengthening trade connections between New Orleans and California, and promoted an infrastructure project to build a railroad across the Mexican isthmus near Oaxaca; this would speed passenger traffic and cargo shipments. According to The New York Times, in an 1852 speech to a railroad builders' convention, Benjamin said this trade route "belongs to New Orleans. Its commerce makes empires of the countries to which it flows." Benjamin lobbied fellow lawmakers about the project, gained funds from private New York bankers, and even helped organize construction crews. In private correspondence he warned backers of problems; project workers suffered yellow fever, shipments of construction materials hit rough seas, and actions or inaction by both U.S. and Mexican officials caused delays and increases in construction costs. Backers had invested several hundred thousand dollars by the time the project died after the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. ### Election to the Senate Benjamin spent the summer of 1851 abroad, including a visit to Paris to see Natalie and Ninette. He was still away in October 1851, when the Whigs nominated him for the state Senate. Despite his absence, he was easily elected. When the new legislature met in January 1852, Benjamin emerged as one of the leading Whig candidates for election to the U.S. Senate seat that would become vacant on March 4, 1853. As the Louisiana legislature, responsible for electing the state's senators, met once in two years under the 1845 constitution, it was not scheduled to meet again before the seat became vacant. Some Whig newspapers thought Benjamin too young and inexperienced at forty, despite his undoubted talent, but the Whig legislative caucus selected him on the second ballot, and he was elected by the two houses over Democrat Solomon W. Downs. He was the fifth person of Jewish descent to be elected to the United States Congress, after David Levy Yulee, Lewis Charles Levin, David S. Kaufman, and Emanuel B. Hart. The outgoing president, Fillmore, offered to nominate Benjamin, a fellow Whig, to fill a Supreme Court vacancy after the Senate Democrats had defeated Fillmore's other nominees for the post. The New York Times reported on February 15, 1853, that "if the President nominates Benjamin, the Democrats are determined to confirm him." The new president, Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, also offered Benjamin a place on the Supreme Court. Pierce Butler suggested in his 1908 biography of Benjamin that the newly elected senator likely declined these offers not only because he preferred active politics, but because he could maintain his law practice and substantial income as a senator, but could not as a justice. As an advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court, Benjamin won 13 of his first 18 cases. Judah Benjamin was sworn in as senator from Louisiana on March 4, 1853, at a brief meeting called just prior to President Pierce's inauguration. These new colleagues included Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia, and Sam Houston of Texas. The slavery issue was in a brief remission as much of the country wished to accept the Compromise of 1850 as a final settlement. When the Senate was not in session, Benjamin remained in Washington, D.C., conducting a lucrative practice including many cases before the Supreme Court, then conveniently located in a room of the Capitol. His law partners in New Orleans took care of his firm's affairs there. About this time Benjamin sold his interest in Bellechasse, lacking the time to deal with plantation business. ### Spokesman for slavery Benjamin's view that slavery should continue was based in his belief that citizens had a right to their property as guaranteed by the Constitution. As Butler put it, "he could no more see that it was right for Northern people to rob him of his slave than it would be for him to connive at horse stealing". He avoided the arguments of some that the slaves were inferior beings, and that their position was ordained by God: Evans ascribes this to Benjamin not being raised as a slaveowner, but coming to it later in life. Benjamin joined in a widespread view of white Southerners that the African American would not be ready for emancipation for many years, if ever. They feared that freeing the slaves would ruin many and lead to murders and rapes by the newly liberated of their former masters and mistresses. Such a massacre had been feared by Southerners since the Haitian Revolution, the violent revolt known as "Santo Domingo" in the South, in which the slaves of what became Haiti killed many whites and mulattoes in the 1804 massacre, after successfully gaining independence from French control. When the anti-slavery book Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1852, Benjamin spoke out against Harriet Beecher Stowe's portrayal. He said that slaves were for the most part well treated, and plantation punishments, such as whipping or branding, were more merciful than sentences of imprisonment that a white man might receive in the North for similar conduct. In early 1854, Senator Douglas introduced his Kansas–Nebraska Bill, calling for popular sovereignty to determine whether the Kansas and Nebraska territories should enter the Union as slave or free states. Depending on the outcome of such elections, slavery might spread to territories closed to it under the Missouri Compromise of 1820. In the debate over the bill, Benjamin defended this change as returning to "the traditions of the fathers", that the federal government not legislate on the subject of slavery. He said that the South merely wished to be left alone. The bill passed, but its passage had drastic political effects, as the differences between North and South that had been thought settled by both the 1820 and 1850 compromises were reopened. The Whig Party was torn apart North from South, with many Northern Whigs joining the new Republican Party, a group pledged to oppose the spread of slavery. Benjamin continued to caucus with the remains of the Whig Party through 1854 and 1855 but, as a member of a legislative minority, he had little influence on legislation and received no important committee assignments. In May 1856, Benjamin joined the Democrats, stating they had the principles of the old-time Whig Party. He indicated, in a letter to constituents, that, as Northern Whigs had failed to vote to uphold the rights granted to Southern states in the Constitution, the Whigs, as a national party, were no more. At a state dinner given by Pierce, Benjamin first met Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, whose wife Varina described the Louisiana senator as having "rather the air of a witty bon vivant than of a great senator". The two men, both ambitious for leadership in the South and the nation, formed a relationship that Evans describes as "respectful but wary". The two had occasional differences; when in 1858, Davis, by then a Mississippi senator, was irritated by Benjamin's questioning him on a military bill and suggested that Benjamin was acting as a paid attorney, the Louisianan challenged him to a duel. Davis apologized. Benjamin, in his speeches in the Senate, took the position that the Union was a compact by the states from which any of them could secede. Nevertheless, he understood that any dissolution would not be peaceful, stating in 1856 that "dreadful will be the internecine war that must ensue". In 1859, Benjamin was elected to a second term, but allegations of involvement in land scandals and the fact that upstate legislators objected to both of Louisiana's senators being from New Orleans stretched the contest to 42 ballots before he prevailed. ### Secession crisis Benjamin worked to deny Douglas the 1860 Democratic presidential nomination, feeling he had turned against the South. Douglas contended that although the Supreme Court, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, had stated Congress could not restrict slavery in the territories, the people of each territory could pass legislation to bar it. This position was anathema to the South. Benjamin praised Douglas's opponent in his re-election bid, former US Representative Abraham Lincoln, for at least being true to his principles as an opponent of the expansion of slavery, whereas Benjamin considered Douglas to be a hypocrite. Benjamin was joined in his opposition to Douglas by Senator Davis; the two were so successful that the 1860 convention was not able to nominate anyone and split into Northern and Southern factions. The Northerners backed Douglas while Southern delegates chose Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Despite their agreement in opposing Douglas, Benjamin and Davis differed on some race issues: in May, Benjamin voted for a bill to aid Africans liberated by U.S. naval vessels from illegal slave ships, in order to return them to their native continent from Key West. Davis and many other Southerners opposed the bill. Between June and December 1860 Benjamin was almost entirely absorbed in the case of United States v. Castillero, which was tried in San Francisco during the latter part of that period. The case concerned a land grant by the former Mexican government of California. Castillero had leased part of his land to British mining companies, and when American authorities ruled the grant invalid, they hired Benjamin; he spent four months in San Francisco working on the case. The trial began in October, and Benjamin gave an address lasting six days. The local correspondent for The New York Times wrote that Benjamin, "a distinguished stranger", drew the largest crowds to the courtroom and "the Senator is making this terribly tedious case interesting". Once the case was submitted for decision in early November, Benjamin departed for the East. The court's ruling, rendered in January 1861, was substantially for his clients, but not satisfied, they appealed. They lost the case entirely to an adverse decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, three justices dissenting, the following year. Benjamin was by then a Confederate Cabinet officer, and could not argue the case. His co-counsel filed his brief with the court. By the time Benjamin returned to the east, the Republican candidate, Lincoln, had been elected president, and there was talk, in Louisiana and elsewhere, of secession from the Union. The New Orleans Picayune reported that Benjamin favored secession only in the last resort. On December 23, 1860, another Louisiana periodical, the Delta, printed a letter from Benjamin dated December 8 stating that, as the people of the North were of unalterable hostility to their Southern brethren, the latter should depart from the government common to them. He also signed a joint letter from Southern Representatives to their constituents, urging the formation of a confederation of the seceding states. According to a letter reportedly written by Benjamin during the crisis, he saw secession as a means of obtaining more favorable terms in a reformed Union. With Southern opinion turning in favor of secession, Benjamin made a farewell speech in the Senate on December 31, 1860, to a packed gallery, desirous of hearing one of the South's most eloquent voices. They were not disappointed; Evans writes that "historians consider Benjamin's farewell ... one of the great speeches in American history." Benjamin foresaw that the South's departure would lead to civil war: > What may be the fate of this horrible contest none can foretell; but this much I will say: the fortunes of war may be adverse to our arms; you may carry desolation into our peaceful land, and with torch and firebrand may set our cities in flames ... you may do all this, and more, but you never can subjugate us; you never can convert the free sons of the soil into vassals, paying tribute to your power; you never can degrade them to a servile and inferior race. Never\! Never\! According to Geoffrey D. Cunningham in his article on Benjamin's role in secession, "Swept up in the popular cries for independence, Benjamin willingly went out with the Southern tide." He and his Louisiana colleague, John Slidell, resigned from the Senate on February 4, 1861, nine days after their state declared secession. ## Confederate statesman ### Attorney General Fearful of arrest as a rebel once he left the Senate, Benjamin quickly departed Washington for New Orleans. On the day of Benjamin's resignation, the Provisional Confederate States Congress gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, and soon chose Davis as president. Davis was sworn in as provisional Confederate States President on February 18, 1861. At home in New Orleans for, it would prove, the last time, Benjamin addressed a rally on Washington's Birthday, February 22, 1861. On February 25, Davis appointed Benjamin, still in New Orleans, as attorney general; the Louisianan was approved immediately and unanimously by the provisional Congress. Davis thus became the first chief executive in North America to appoint a Jew to his Cabinet. Davis, in his memoirs, remarked that he chose Benjamin because he "had a very high reputation as a lawyer, and my acquaintance with him in the Senate had impressed me with the lucidity of his intellect, his systematic habits, and capacity for labor". Meade suggested that Davis wanted to have a Louisianan in his Cabinet, but that a smarter course of action would have been to send Benjamin abroad to win over the European governments. Butler called Benjamin's appointment "a waste of good material". Historian William C. Davis, in his volume on the formation of the Confederate government, notes, "For some there was next to nothing to do, none more so than Benjamin." The role of the attorney general in a Confederacy that did not yet have federal courts or marshals was so minimal that initial layouts for the building housing the government in Montgomery allotted no space to the Justice Department. Meade found the time that Benjamin spent as attorney general to be fruitful, as it allowed him the opportunity to judge Davis's character and to ingratiate himself with the president. Benjamin served as a host, entertaining dignitaries and others Davis had no time to see. At the first Cabinet meeting, Benjamin counseled Davis to have the government buy 150,000 bales of cotton for shipment to the United Kingdom, with the proceeds used to buy arms and for future needs. His advice was not taken, as the Cabinet believed the war would be short and successful. Benjamin was called upon from time to time to render legal opinions, writing on April 1 to assure Treasury Secretary Christopher Memminger that lemons and oranges could enter the Confederacy duty-free, but walnuts could not. Once Virginia joined the Confederacy, the capital was moved to Richmond, though against Benjamin's advice—he believed that the city was too close to the North. Nevertheless, he traveled there with his brother-in-law, Jules St. Martin; the two lived in the same house throughout the war, and Benjamin probably procured the young man's job at the War Department. Although Alabama's Leroy Walker was Secretary of War, Davis—a war hero and former U.S. War Secretary—considered himself more qualified and gave many orders himself. When the Confederates were unable to follow up their victory at the First Battle of Manassas by threatening Washington, Walker was criticized in the press. In September, Walker resigned to join the army as a brigadier general, and Davis appointed Benjamin in his place. Butler wrote that Davis had found the cheerfully competent Benjamin "a most useful member of the official family, and thought him suited for almost any post in it." In addition to his appointment as War Secretary, Benjamin continued to act as Attorney General until November 15, 1861. ### Secretary of War As War Secretary, Benjamin was responsible for a territory stretching from Virginia to Texas. It was his job, with Davis looking over his shoulder, to supervise the Confederate Army and to feed, supply, and arm it in a nascent country with almost no arms manufacturers. Accordingly, Benjamin saw his job as closely tied to foreign affairs, as the Confederacy was dependent on imports to supply its troops. Davis had chosen a "defensive war" strategy: the Confederacy would await invasion by the Union and then seek to defeat its armies until Lincoln tired of sending them. Davis and Benjamin worked together closely, and as Davis came to realize that his subordinate was loyal to the Confederacy and to Davis personally, he returned complete trust in Benjamin. Varina Davis wrote, "It was to me a curious spectacle, the steady approximation to a thorough friendliness of the President and his War Minister. It was a very gradual rapprochement, but all the more solid for that reason." In his months as War Secretary, Benjamin sent thousands of communications. According to Evans, Benjamin initially "turn[ed] prejudice to his favor and play[ed] on the Southerner's instinctive respect for the Jewish mind with a brilliant performance." Nevertheless, Benjamin faced difficulties that he could do little to solve. The Confederacy lacked sufficient soldiers, trained officers to command them, naval and civilian ships, manufacturing capacity to make ships and many weapons, and powder for guns and cannon. The Union had those things and moved to block the South's access to European supplies, both by blockades and by buying up supplies that the South might have secured. Other problems included drunkenness among the men and their officers and uncertainty as to when and where the expected Northern invasion would begin. Also, Benjamin had no experience of the military or of the executive branch of the government, placing him in a poor position to contradict Davis. An insurgency against the Confederacy developed in staunchly pro-Union East Tennessee in late 1861, and at Davis's order, Benjamin sent troops to crush it. Once it was put down, Benjamin and Davis were in a quandary about what to do about its leader, William "Parson" Brownlow, who had been captured, and eventually allowed him to cross to Union-controlled territory in the hope that it would cause Lincoln to release Confederate prisoners. While Brownlow was in Southern custody, he stated that he expected, "no more mercy from Benjamin than was shown by his illustrious predecessors towards Jesus Christ". Benjamin had difficulty in managing the Confederacy's generals. He quarreled with General P.G.T. Beauregard, a war hero since his victory at First Manassas. Beauregard sought to add a rocket battery to his command, an action that Benjamin stated was not authorized by law. He was most likely relaying Davis's views, and when challenged by Beauregard, Davis backed Benjamin, advising the general to "dismiss this small matter from your mind. In the hostile masses before you, you have a subject more worthy of your contemplation". In January 1862, Stonewall Jackson's forces had advanced in western Virginia, leaving troops under William W. Loring at the small town of Romney. Distant from Jackson's other forces and ill-supplied, Loring and other officers petitioned the War Department to be recalled, and Benjamin, after consulting Davis, so ordered after he used the pretext of rumored Union troop movements in the area. Jackson complied but, in a letter to Benjamin, asked to be removed from the front or to resign. High-ranking Confederates soothed Jackson into withdrawing his request. The power of state governments was another flaw in the Confederacy and a problem for Benjamin. Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown repeatedly demanded arms and the return of Georgian troops to defend his state. North Carolina Governor Henry T. Clark also wanted troops returned to him to defend his coastline. After Cape Hatteras, on the North Carolina's coast, was captured, Confederate forces fell back to Roanoke Island. If it fell, a number of ports in that area of the coast would be at risk, and Norfolk, Virginia, might be threatened by land. General Henry A. Wise, commanding Roanoke, also demanded troops and supplies. He received little from Benjamin's War Department that had no arms to send, as the Union blockade was preventing supplies from being imported. That Confederate armories were empty was a fact not publicly known at the time. Benjamin and Davis hoped that the island's defenses could hold off the Union forces, but an overwhelming number of troops were landed in February 1862 at an undefended point, and the Confederates were quickly defeated. Combined with Union General Ulysses S. Grant's capture of Fort Henry, the site of the Battle of Fort Henry, and Fort Donelson in Tennessee, it was the most severe military blow yet to the Confederacy, and there was a public outcry against Benjamin, led by General Wise. It was revealed a quarter-century after the war that Benjamin and Davis had agreed for Benjamin to act as a scapegoat, rather than to reveal the shortage of arms. Not knowing it, the Richmond Examiner accused Benjamin of "stupid complacency." Diarist Mary Chestnut recorded that "the mob calls him Mr. Davis's pet Jew." The Wise family never forgave Benjamin, to the detriment of his memory in Southern eyes. Wise's son, Captain Jennings Wise, fell at Roanoke Island, and Henry's grandson John Wise, interviewed in 1936, told Meade that "the fat Jew sitting at his desk" was to blame. Another of the general's sons, also named John Wise, wrote a highly-popular book about the South in the Civil War, The End of an Era (1899) in which he said that Benjamin "had more brains and less heart than any other civic leader in the South. ... The Confederacy and its collapse were no more to Judah P. Benjamin than last year's birds nest." The Confederate States Congress established a special committee to investigate the military losses, and Benjamin testified before it. The Secretary of State, Virginia's Robert M. T. Hunter, had quarreled with Davis and resigned, and in March 1862, Benjamin was appointed as his replacement. Varina Davis noted that some in Congress had sought Benjamin's ouster "because of reverses which no one could have averted, [so] the President promoted him to the State Department with a personal and aggrieved sense of injustice done to the man who had now become his friend and right hand." Richmond diarist Sallie Ann Brock Putnam wrote, "Mr. Benjamin was not forgiven... this act on the part of the President [in promoting Benjamin], in defiance of public opinion, was considered as unwise, arbitrary, and a reckless risking of his reputation and popularity... [Benjamin] was ever afterwards unpopular in the Confederacy, and particularly in Virginia." Despite the promotion, the committee reported that any blame for the defeat at Roanoke Island should attach to Wise's superior, Major General Benjamin Huger, "and the late secretary of war, J.P. Benjamin." ### Confederate Secretary of State Throughout his time as Secretary of State, Benjamin tried to induce Britain and France to recognize the Confederacy—no other nation was likely to do so unless these powerful states led the way. The protection this would bring to the Confederacy and its foreign trade was hoped to be enough to save it. #### Basis of Confederate foreign policy By the 1850s, cheap Southern cotton fueled the industries of Europe. The mills of Britain, developed during the first half of the 19th century, by 1860 used more cotton than the rest of the industrialized world combined. Cotton imports to Britain came almost entirely from the American South. According to an article in The Economist in 1853, "let any great social or physical convulsion visit the United States, and England would feel the shock from Land's End to John O'Groats. The lives of nearly two million of our countrymen ... hang upon a thread." In 1855, an Ohioan, David Christy, published Cotton Is King: or Slavery in the Light of Political Economy. Christy argued that the flow of cotton was so important to the industrialized world that cutting it off would be devastating—not least to the Northern United States, as cotton was by far the largest U.S. export. This became known as the "King Cotton" theory, to which Davis was an enthusiastic subscriber. Benjamin also spoke in favor of the theory, though Butler suspected he may have "known better", based on his firsthand knowledge of Europe. When war came, Davis, against Benjamin's advice, imposed an embargo on exports of cotton to nations that had not recognized the Confederate government, hoping to force such relations, especially with Britain and France. As the Union was attempting to prevent cotton from being exported from Confederate ports by a blockade and other means, this played to a certain extent into the hands of Lincoln and his Secretary of State, William H. Seward. Additionally, when the war began, Britain had a large surplus of cotton in warehouses, enough to keep the mills running at least part-time for a year or so. Although many prominent Britons believed the South would prevail, there was a reluctance to recognize Richmond until it had gained the military victories to put its foe at bay. Much of this was due to hatred of slavery, though part of it stemmed from a desire to remain on good terms with the U.S. government—due to a drought in 1862, Britain was forced to import large quantities of wheat and flour from the United States. Also, Britain feared the expansionist Americans might invade the vulnerable Canadian colonies, as Seward hinted they might. #### Appointment Davis appointed Benjamin as Secretary of State on March 17, 1862. He was promptly confirmed by the Confederate Senate. A motion to reconsider the confirmation was lost, 13–8. According to Butler, the appointment of Benjamin brought Davis little political support, as the average white Southerner did not understand Benjamin and somewhat disliked him. As there was not much open opposition to Davis in the South at the time, Benjamin's appointment was not criticized, but was not given much praise either. Meade noted, "the silence of many influential newspapers was ominous. [Benjamin's] promotion in the face of such bitter criticism of his conduct in the war office caused the first serious lack of confidence in the Davis government." Meade wrote that, since the Secretary of State would have to work closely with Jefferson Davis, Benjamin was likely the person best suited to the position. In addition to his relationship with the President, Benjamin was very close to the Confederate First Lady, Varina Davis, with whom he exchanged confidences regarding war events and the President's health. "Together, and by turns, they could help him over the most difficult days." For recreation, Benjamin frequented Richmond's gambling dens, playing poker and faro. He was incensed when British correspondent William Howard Russell publicized his gambling, feeling that it was an invasion of his private affairs. He was also displeased that Russell depicted him as a losing gambler, when his reputation was the opposite. #### Early days (1862–1863) The Trent Affair had taken place before Benjamin took office as Secretary of State: a U.S. warship had in October 1861 removed Confederate diplomats James Mason and James Slidell (Benjamin's former Louisiana colleague in the U.S. Senate) and their private secretaries from a British-flagged vessel. The crisis brought the U.S. and Britain near war, and was resolved by their release. By the time of Benjamin's appointment, Mason and Slidell were at their posts in London and Paris as putative ministers from the Confederacy, seeking recognition by the governments of Britain and France. With difficult communications between the South and Europe (dispatches were often lost or intercepted), Benjamin was initially reluctant to change the instructions given the agents by Secretary Hunter. Communications improved by 1863, with Benjamin ordering that dispatches be sent to Bermuda or the Bahamas, from where they reached the Confederacy by blockade runner. As a practical matter, Benjamin's chances of gaining European recognition rose and fell with the military fortunes of the Confederacy. When, at the end of June 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee turned back Union General George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign in the Seven Days Battles, ending the immediate threat to Richmond, Emperor Napoleon III of France favorably received proposals from Benjamin, through Slidell, for the French to intervene on the Confederacy's behalf in exchange for trade concessions. Nevertheless, the Emperor proved unwilling to act without Britain. In August 1862, Mason, angered by the refusal of British government ministers to meet with him, threatened to resign his post. Benjamin soothed him, stating that while Mason should not submit to insulting treatment, resignation should not take place without discussion. The bloody standoff at Antietam in September 1862 that ended Lee's first major incursion into the North gave Lincoln the confidence in Union arms he needed to announce the Emancipation Proclamation. British newspapers mocked Lincoln for hypocrisy in freeing slaves only in Confederate-held areas, where he could exercise no authority. British officials had been shocked by the outcome of Antietam—they had expected Lee to deliver another brilliant victory—and now considered an additional reason for intervening in the conflict. Antietam, the bloodiest day of the war, had been a stalemate; they read this as presaging an overall deadlock in the war, with North and South at each other's throats for years as Britain's mills sat empty and its people starved. France agreed with this assessment. The final few months of 1862 saw a high water mark for Benjamin's diplomacy. In October, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone, expressed confidence in Confederate victory, stating in Newcastle, "There is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army. They are making, it appears, a navy, and they have made what is more than either—they have made a nation." Later that month, Napoleon proposed to the British and Russians (a U.S. ally) that they combine to require a six months' armistice for mediation, and an end to the blockade; if they did so, it would likely lead to Southern independence. The proposal divided the British Cabinet. In mid-November, at the urgings of Palmerston and War Secretary George Cornewall Lewis, members decided to continue to wait for the South to defeat Lincoln's forces before recognizing it. Although proponents of intervention were prepared to await another opportunity, growing realization among the British public that the Emancipation Proclamation meant that Union victory would be slavery's end made succoring the South politically infeasible. Benjamin had not been allowed to offer the inducement for intervention that might have succeeded—abolition of slavery in the Confederacy, and because of that, Meade deemed his diplomacy "seriously, perhaps fatally handicapped". The Secretary of State blamed Napoleon for the failure, believing the Emperor had betrayed the Confederacy to get the ruler the French had installed in Mexico, Maximilian, accepted by the United States. In Paris, Slidell had been approached by the banking firm Erlanger et Cie. The company offered to float a loan to benefit the Confederacy. The proposed terms provided a large commission to Erlanger and would entitle the bondholder to cotton at a discounted price once the South won the war. Baron Frederic Emile d'Erlanger, head of the firm, journeyed to Richmond in early 1863, and negotiated with Benjamin, although the transaction properly fell within the jurisdiction of Treasury Secretary Memminger. The banker softened the terms somewhat, though they were still lucrative for his firm. Benjamin felt the deal was worth it, as it would provide the Confederacy with badly needed funds to pay its agents in Europe. #### Increasing desperation (1863–1865) The twin rebel defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in early July 1863 made it unlikely that Britain, or any other nation, would recognize a slaveholding Confederacy staggering towards oblivion. Accordingly, in August, Benjamin wrote to Mason telling him that as Davis believed the British unwilling to recognize the South, he was free to leave the country. In October, with Davis absent on a trip to Tennessee, Benjamin heard that the British consul in Savannah had forbidden British subjects in the Confederate Army from being used against the United States. The Secretary of State convened a Cabinet meeting, that expelled the remaining British consuls in Confederate-controlled territory, then notified Davis by letter. Evans suggests that Benjamin's actions made him the Confederacy's acting president—the first Jewish president. Benjamin supervised the Confederate Secret Service, responsible for covert operations in the North, and financed former federal Interior Secretary Jacob Thompson to work behind the scenes financing operations that might undermine Lincoln politically. Although efforts were made to boost Peace Democrats, the most prominent actions proved to be the St. Albans Raid (an attack on a Vermont town from Canada) and an unsuccessful attempt to burn New York City. In the aftermath of the war, these activities led to accusations that Benjamin and Davis were involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, as one Confederate courier, John H. Surratt, who had received money from Benjamin, was tried for involvement in the conspiracy, though Surratt was acquitted. As the Confederacy's military fortunes flagged, there was increasing consideration of what would have been unthinkable in 1861—enlisting male slaves in the army and emancipating them for their service. In August 1863, B. H. Micou, a relative of a former law partner, wrote to Benjamin proposing the use of black soldiers. Benjamin responded that this was not feasible, principally for legal and financial reasons, and that the slaves were performing valuable services for the Confederacy where they were. According to Meade, "Benjamin did not offer any objections to Micou's plan except on practical grounds—he was not repelled by the radical nature of the proposal". A British financial agent for the Confederacy, James Spence, also urged emancipation as a means of gaining British recognition. Benjamin allowed Spence to remain in his position for almost a year despite the differences with Confederate policy, before finally dismissing him in late 1863. Despite official neutrality, tens of thousands from British-ruled Ireland were enlisting in the Union cause; Benjamin sent an agent to Ireland hoping to impede those efforts and Dudley Mann to Rome to urge Pope Pius IX to forbid Catholic Irish from enlisting. The Pope did not do so, though he responded sympathetically. In January 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne, of the Army of Tennessee, proposed emancipating and arming the slaves. Davis, when he heard of it, turned it down and ordered it kept secret. Evans notes that Benjamin "had been thinking in similar terms for much longer, and perhaps the recommendation of so respected an officer was just the impetus he needed." The year 1864 was a disastrous one for the Confederacy, with Lee forced within siege lines at Petersburg and Union General William T. Sherman sacking Atlanta and devastating Georgia on his march to the sea. Benjamin urged Davis to send the secretary's fellow Louisianan, Duncan Kenner, to Paris and London, with an offer of emancipation in exchange for recognition. Davis was only willing to offer gradual emancipation, and both Napoleon and Palmerston rejected the proposal. Benjamin continued to press the matter, addressing a mass meeting in Richmond in February 1865 in support of arming the slaves and emancipating them. A bill eventually emerged from the Confederate Congress in March, but it had many restrictions, and it was too late to affect the outcome of the war. In January 1865, Lincoln, who had been re-elected the previous November, sent Francis Blair as an emissary to Richmond, hoping to secure reunion without further bloodshed. Both sides agreed to a meeting at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Benjamin drafted vague instructions for the Southern delegation, led by Vice President Alexander Stephens, but Davis insisted on modifying them to refer to North and South as "two nations". This was the point that scuttled the Hampton Roads Conference; Lincoln would not consider the South a separate entity, insisting on union and emancipation. ## Escape By March 1865, the Confederate military situation was desperate. Most major population centers had fallen, and General Lee's defense of Richmond was faltering against massive Union forces. Nevertheless, Benjamin retained his usual good humor; on the evening of April 1, with evacuation likely, he was at the State Department offices, singing a silly ballad of his own composition, "The Exit from Shocko Hill", a graveyard district located in Richmond. On April 2, Lee sent word that he could only keep Union troops away from the line of the Richmond and Danville Railroad—the only railroad still running out of Richmond—for a short time. Those who did not leave Richmond would be trapped. At 11:00 pm that night, the Confederate President and Cabinet left aboard a Danville-bound train. Navy Secretary Stephen R. Mallory recorded that Benjamin's "hope and good humor [was] inexhaustible ... with a 'never-give-up-the-ship' sort of air, referred to other great national causes which had been redeemed from far gloomier reverses than ours". In Danville, Benjamin shared a room with another refugee, in the home of a banker. For a week, Danville served as capital of the Confederacy, until word came of Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House. With no army to shield the Confederate government, it would be captured by Union forces within days, so Davis and his Cabinet, including Benjamin, fled south to Greensboro, North Carolina. Five minutes after the train passed over the Haw River, Union cavalry raiders burned the bridge, trapping the trains that followed Davis's. Greensboro, fearing wrathful reprisal from the Union, gave the fugitives little hospitality, forcing Benjamin and the other Cabinet members to bunk in a railroad boxcar. Davis hoped to reach Texas, where rumor had it large Confederate forces remained active. The Cabinet met in Greensboro, and Generals Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston sketched the bleak military situation. Davis, backed as usual by Benjamin, was determined to continue to fight. The refugee government moved south on April 15. With the train tracks cut, most Cabinet members rode on horseback, but the heavyset Benjamin declared he would not ride on one until he had to, and shared an ambulance with Jules St. Martin and others. For the entertainment of his companions, Benjamin recited Tennyson's "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington". In Charlotte, Benjamin stayed in the home of a Jewish merchant as surrender negotiations dragged. Here, Benjamin abandoned Davis's plan to fight on, telling him and the Cabinet that the cause was hopeless. When negotiations failed, Benjamin was part of the shrunken remnant of associates that moved on with Davis. The party reached Abbeville, South Carolina on May 2, and Benjamin told Davis that he wanted to separate from the presidential party temporarily, and go to the Bahamas to be able to send instructions to foreign agents before rejoining Davis in Texas. According to historian William C. Davis, "the pragmatic Secretary of State almost certainly never had any intention of returning to the South once gone". When he bade John Reagan goodbye, the postmaster general asked where Benjamin was going. "To the farthest place from the United States, if it takes me to the middle of China." With one companion, Benjamin travelled south in a poor carriage, pretending to be a Frenchman who spoke no English. He had some gold with him, and left much of it for the support of relatives. He was traveling in the same general direction as the Davis party, but evaded capture whereas Davis was taken by Union troops. Benjamin reached Monticello, Florida, on May 13 to learn Union troops were in nearby Madison. Benjamin decided to continue alone on horseback, east and south along Florida's Gulf Coast, pretending to be a South Carolina farmer. John T. Lesley, James McKay, and C. J. Munnerlyn assisted in hiding Benjamin in a swamp, before eventually transporting him to Gamble Mansion in Ellenton, on the southwest coast of Florida. From there, assisted by the blockade runner Captain Frederick Tresca, he reached Bimini in the Bahamas. His escape from Florida to England was not without hardship: at one point he pretended to be a Jewish cook on Tresca's vessel, to deceive American soldiers who inspected it—one of whom stated it was the first time he had seen a Jew do menial labor. The small sponge-carrying vessel on which he left Bimini bound for Nassau exploded on the way, and he and the three black crewmen eventually managed to return to Bimini. Tresca's ship was still there, and he chartered it to take him to Nassau. From there, he took a ship for Havana, and on August 6, 1865, left there for Britain. He was not yet done with disaster; his ship caught fire after departing St. Thomas, and the crew put out the flames only with difficulty. On August 30, 1865, Judah Benjamin arrived at Southampton, in Britain. ## Career in England Benjamin spent a week in London assisting Mason in winding up Confederate affairs. He then went to Paris to visit his wife and daughter for the first time since before the war. Friends in Paris urged him to join a mercantile firm there, but Benjamin felt that such a career would be subject to interference by Seward and the United States. Accordingly, Benjamin sought to shape his old course in a new country, resuming his legal career as an English barrister. Most of Benjamin's property had been destroyed or confiscated, and he needed to make a living for himself and his relatives. He had money in the United Kingdom as he had, during the war, purchased cotton for transport to Liverpool by blockade runner. On January 13, 1866, Benjamin enrolled at Lincoln's Inn, and soon thereafter was admitted to read law under Charles Pollock, son of Chief Baron Charles Edward Pollock, who took him as a pupil at his father's direction. Benjamin, despite his age of 54, was initially required, like his thirty-years-younger peers, to attend for twelve terms, that is, three years. According to Benjamin's obituary in The Times, though, "the secretary of the Confederacy was dispensed from the regular three years of unprofitable dining, and called to the bar" on June 6, 1866. Once qualified as a barrister, Benjamin chose to join the Northern Circuit, as it included Liverpool, where his connections in New Orleans and knowledge of mercantile affairs would do him the most good. In an early case, he defended two former Confederate agents against a suit by the United States to gain assets said to belong to that nation. Although he lost that case (United States v Wagner) on appeal, he was successful against his former enemies in United States v McRae (1869). He had need of rapid success, as most of his remaining assets were lost in the collapse of the firm of Overend, Gurney and Company. He was reduced to penning columns on international affairs for The Daily Telegraph. According to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, "repeating his Louisiana progress, Benjamin made his reputation among his new peers by publication". In an early representation, he wrote a complex governing document for an insurance firm that other counsel had declined despite the substantial fee, due to the early deadline. After brief study, Benjamin wrote out the document, never making a correction or erasure. In 1868, Benjamin published A Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property, With Reference to the American Decisions, to the French Code, and Civil Law. This work, known for short as Benjamin on Sales, became a classic in both Britain and America, and launched his career as a barrister. It went through three editions prior to Benjamin's death in 1884; an eighth edition was published in 2010. Today Benjamin's Sale of Goods forms part of the "common law library" of key practitioner texts on English civil law. In 1867, Benjamin had been indicted in Richmond, along with Davis, Lee, and others, for waging war against the United States. The indictment was soon quashed. Davis visited London in 1868, free on bail, and Benjamin advised him not to take legal action against the author of a book that had angered Davis, as it would only give the book publicity. Benjamin corresponded with Davis, and met with him on the former rebel president's visits to Europe during Benjamin's lifetime, though the two were never as close as they had been during the war. Benjamin was created a "Palatine silk", entitled to the precedence of a Queen's Counsel within Lancashire, in July 1869. There was a large creation of Queen's Counsel in early 1872, but Benjamin was not included; it was stated in his Times obituary that he had put his name forward. Later that year, he argued the case of Potter v Rankin before the House of Lords and so impressed Lord Hatherley that a patent of precedence was soon made out, giving Benjamin the privileges of a Queen's Counsel. As he became prominent as a barrister, he discontinued practice before juries (at which he was less successful) in favor of trials or appeals before judges. In his last years in practice, he demanded an additional fee of 100 guineas (£105) to appear in any court besides the House of Lords and the Privy Council. In 1875, he was made a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. In 1881, Benjamin represented Arthur Orton, the Tichborne claimant, before the House of Lords. Orton, a butcher from Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, had claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne, a baronet who had vanished some years previously, and Orton had perjured himself in the course of defending his claim. Benjamin sought to overturn the sentence of 14 years passed on Orton, but was not successful. ### Decline and death In his final years, Benjamin suffered from health issues. In 1880, he was badly injured in a fall from a tram in Paris. He also developed diabetes. He suffered a heart attack in Paris at the end of 1882, and his doctor ordered him to retire. His health improved enough to allow him to travel to London in June 1883 for a dinner in his honor attended by the English bench and bar. He returned to Paris and suffered a relapse of his heart trouble in early 1884. Natalie Benjamin had the last rites of the Catholic Church administered to her Jewish husband before his death in Paris on May 6, 1884, and funeral services were held in a church prior to Judah Benjamin's interment at Père Lachaise Cemetery in the St. Martin family crypt. His grave did not bear his name until 1938, when a plaque was placed by the Paris chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. ## Appraisal Benjamin was the first U.S. senator to profess the Jewish faith. In 1845, David Yulee, born David Levy, his second cousin, had been sworn in for Florida, but he renounced Judaism and eventually formally converted to Christianity. As an adult, Benjamin married a non-Jew, was not a member of a synagogue, and took no part in communal affairs. He rarely spoke of his Jewish background publicly, but was not ashamed of it. Some of the stories told of Benjamin that touch on this subject come from Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, who referred to an address Benjamin delivered in a San Francisco synagogue on Yom Kippur in 1860, though whether this occurred is open to question as Wise was not there and it was not reported in the city's Jewish newspaper. One quote from Senate debate that remains "part of the Benjamin legend", according to Evans, followed an allusion to Moses as a freer of slaves by a Northern senator, hinting that Benjamin was an "Israelite in Egyptian clothing". Benjamin is supposed to have replied, "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate hand of deity, amidst the thunderings and lightnings of Mount Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain." However, this anecdote is likely apocryphal as the same exchange between British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Daniel O'Connell took place in the House of Commons in 1835. Edgar M. Kahn, in his journal article on the 1860 California sojourn, wrote, "Benjamin's life is an example of a man's determination to overcome almost insurmountable barriers by industry, perseverance, and intelligent use of a remarkable brain." This brilliance was recognized by contemporaries; Salomon de Rothschild, in 1861, deemed Benjamin "the greatest mind" in North America. Nevertheless, according to Meade, "he was given to quixotic enthusiasms and was sometimes too cocksure of his knowledge." Ginsburg said of Benjamin, "he rose to the top of the legal profession twice in one lifetime, on two continents, beginning his first ascent as a raw youth and his second as a fugitive minister of a vanquished power." Davis, after Benjamin's death, deemed him the most able member of his Cabinet, and said that the lawyer's postwar career had fully vindicated his confidence in him. According to Brook, "in every age, a heroic sage struggles to rescue Benjamin from obscurity—and invariably fails." Benjamin left no memoir and destroyed his personal papers, by which "the task of future researchers and historians was made exceedingly difficult and laborious". After his death, Benjamin was rarely written about, in contrast to Davis and other Confederate leaders. Part of this was due to Benjamin depriving his potential biographers of source material, but even Davis, in his two-volume war memoir, mentions him only twice. Evans suggests that as Davis wrote the books in part to defend and memorialize his place in history, it would not have been characteristic of him to give much credit to Benjamin. Davis, in the midst of postwar business struggles, may have resented Benjamin's success as a barrister, or may have feared that allegations of involvement in Lincoln's assassination would again be made against the two men. Brook concurs that Benjamin's postwar success, that began as Davis lay in prison and other Confederates struggled for survival, may have soured Southerners towards the former secretary, but that anti-Semitism was also likely a factor. "For the guardians of Confederate memory after Reconstruction, Benjamin became a kind of pet Jew, generally ignored, but then trotted out at opportune moments to defend the segregated South against charges of bigotry." Those writing on Jewish history were reluctant to glorify a slaveowner, and reacted to Benjamin's story with "embarrassed dismay". This was especially so in the two generations following 1865 when the question of the Civil War remained an active issue in American politics. It was not until the 1930s that Benjamin began to be mentioned as a significant figure in the history of the United States, and in the chronicle of the Jews there. Nevertheless, Tom Mountain, in his 2009 article on Benjamin, points out that Benjamin was respected in the South as a leader of the rebel cause for a century after the Civil War, and that Southern schoolchildren who could not name the current Secretary of State in Washington knew about Benjamin. Reform Rabbi Daniel Polish noted in 1988 that Benjamin "represent[ed] a significant dilemma [in] my years growing up as a Jew both proud of his people and with an intense commitment to the ideals of liberalism and human solidarity that I found embodied in the civil rights movement." Benjamin appears as a character in a number of works of fiction, notably Viña Delmar's 1956 historical novel Beloved and Dara Horn's 2009 novel All Other Nights. The subject of Benjamin's fictional afterlife has been discussed by Michael Hoberman, who notes how the man's "many mysteries" have appealed to novelists as well as historians. Berman recounts a story that during the Civil War, Benjamin was called to the Torah at Beth Ahabah synagogue in Richmond. However, there is no proof of this, nor does Benjamin's name appear in any surviving record of the Jews of that city. "But whether or not Benjamin practiced Judaism overtly or contributed to Jewish causes, to the Jews of the South, he was a symbol of a coreligionist who was a man among men". According to Evans, "Benjamin survives, as he willed it: a shadowy figure in Civil War history". Kahn noted that Benjamin "is epitomized as a foremost orator, lawyer, and statesman, without a peer at the bars of two of the world's greatest nations". Meade questioned whether Benjamin's character can ever be fully understood: > We can easily prove that Benjamin was the only genius in the Confederate cabinet. We can demonstrate that his career, with its American and English phases, was more glamorous than that of any other prominent Confederate. But we are still confronted by one perplexing problem: Judah P. Benjamin was an enigmatic figure—the most incomprehensible of all the Confederate leaders. Lee, Jackson, even Jefferson Davis, are crystal clear in comparison with the Jewish lawyer and statesman. The acrimonious debate about his character began before the Civil War and has not ceased to this day. A monument was installed in 1948 in Charlotte, North Carolina commemorating Benjamin. It was removed in 2020 amid the George Floyd protests. ## See also - Oscar Straus (politician), the first Jewish member of the United States Cabinet - List of United States senators born outside the United States - List of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States Congress - List of Jewish members of the United States Congress ## Publications - - - - - - -

Bombing of Obersalzberg

25 April 1945 air raid on Germany

The bombing of Obersalzberg was an air raid carried out by the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command on 25 April 1945 during the last days of World War II in Europe. The operation targeted Obersalzberg, a complex of residences and bunkers in Bavaria which had been built for Adolf Hitler and other key members of Germany's leadership. Many buildings in the complex were destroyed, though Hitler's residence and the bunker network were only slightly damaged. Two Allied bombers were shot down with the loss of four airmen, and 31 Germans were killed. Historians have identified several motives for the attack on Obersalzberg. These include supporting Allied ground forces, demonstrating the effectiveness of the British heavy bomber force, convincing die-hard Germans that the war was lost and obscuring the memory of pre-war appeasement policies. The attack was conducted by a large force of 359 heavy bombers in an attempt to destroy the bunkers located below Obersalzberg, from which the Allies feared that senior members of the German Government would command an Alpine Fortress. After difficulties locating and marking the targets were overcome, the bombers attacked in two waves. The approximately 3,000 people at Obersalzberg sheltered in bunkers, and the nearby town of Berchtesgaden was undamaged. Hitler was in Berlin at the time of the attack and Hermann Göring, the only senior Nazi at Obersalzberg, survived. While the raid on Obersalzberg was celebrated at the time, it is little remembered today. Most of the Allied personnel involved in the operation took satisfaction from attacking Hitler's residence, and it received extensive media coverage. As the Alpine Fortress proved to be a myth, most post-war histories made little mention of the operation. ## Background During the period in which Germany was ruled by the Nazi Party, the Obersalzberg complex of chalets and mountain lodges was constructed near the Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden. This complex was used by Adolf Hitler and other members of the Nazi Party's elite. Hitler usually spent more than a third of each year at Obersalzberg. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, he hosted many international leaders at his residence there, the Berghof. Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met at the Berghof on 15 September 1938 as part of the negotiations that led to the Munich Agreement. Nazi propaganda publicised the Berghof, and it became an important symbol of Hitler's leadership in the eyes of most Germans. Hitler continued to frequently visit Obersalzberg during World War II, and it was one of his main command centres. He spent most of early 1944 there, and left for the final time on 14 July. A sophisticated network of bunkers and tunnels was constructed under Obersalzberg during the war in response to the intensifying Allied air raids on Germany. The complex was defended by anti-aircraft guns as well as machinery capable of covering the area in a smoke screen. All of its buildings were camouflaged during early 1944 to make them difficult to locate from the air. The Allies considered attacking Obersalzberg prior to April 1945, but decided against doing so. Obersalzberg's location was well known, and in June 1944 Allied intelligence confirmed that Hitler was directing the resistance to the Normandy landings from the Berghof. The Royal Air Force (RAF) developed a plan to attack Obersalzberg that was designated "Hellbound". United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) reconnaissance aircraft photographed the area between 16 and 20 June, and the American Fifteenth Air Force prepared flight routes to attack it from bases in Allied-controlled areas of Italy. The head of the USAAF, General "Hap" Arnold, decided against conducting the attack on 20 June. Arnold made this decision on the grounds that it was unlikely that Hitler would be killed, and attempting this was undesirable anyway as his inept leadership of the German military was to the Allies' advantage. Arnold was also concerned that the attack force would suffer heavy casualties as the area was believed to be strongly defended. He recorded in his diary "Our secret weapon is Hitler, hence do not bomb his castle. Do not let him get hurt, we want him to continue making mistakes". The British Special Operations Executive also developed plans designated Operation Foxley during mid-1944 to assassinate Hitler in the Obersalzberg area using special forces personnel. This operation was never attempted. The Fifteenth Air Force proposed bombing the Berchtesgaden area in February 1945, but this was blocked by the USAAF's high command due to the difficulty of accurately hitting the target and a continuing belief that the Allies were better off with Hitler still in command of the German military. Shortly afterwards, plans for an attack on bridges in the Berchtesgaden area by both the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces were developed. These plans were never acted on. The only attack on Berchtesgaden prior to April 1945 was made on 20 February 1945 by eight Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter bombers from the Fifteenth Air Force. These aircraft struck the area after being unable to complete a mission in Italy, and their commander, Major John L. Beck, was initially unaware of its importance. The Thunderbolts attacked a train, and encountered heavy anti-aircraft fire. When the attack was reported, there was disappointment among the public in Allied countries that the Berghof had not been damaged. By April 1945, the Allies had near-complete air superiority over Germany. As a result of the weakening of the German air defences and the availability of long-ranged Allied escort fighter aircraft, the RAF's Bomber Command had been making occasional daylight raids on targets in Germany in addition to its usual night operations since late 1944. The frequency with which it conducted daylight attacks increased over time. The British Chiefs of Staff Committee directed that the area bombing of German cities cease on the 16 April, with the bombers instead focusing on providing "direct support to the allied armies in the land battle" and continuing their attacks on the remnants of the German Navy. In line with this order, Bomber Command attacked German cities that lay in the path of the Allied armies and made precision bombing raids against other targets until 25 April. ## Planning As the war in Europe neared its end in 1945, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) became concerned over intelligence reports that indicated senior members of the German Government as well as Waffen-SS units would assemble at Berchtesgaden to prolong the fighting from an "Alpine Fortress". This was an intelligence failure, as the Germans made few attempts to prepare defensive positions in the Alps until the last weeks of the war. Hitler sent most of his personal staff to Berchtesgaden in April, but remained in Berlin. Most of the other senior ministers fled to other parts of Germany. The former Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring was the only highly-ranked member of the government at Obersalzberg at the time of the attack. Göring had been stripped of all his positions and was being held under house arrest on Hitler's orders as punishment for sending a telegram on 23 April seeking permission to assume Germany's leadership. The decision to conduct an air raid on Obersalzberg was made in April 1945. The attack was proposed by the head of Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, and approved by SHAEF. Harris specified that the goal of the raid was to support the United States Army's XV Corps, which was rapidly advancing towards Munich from whence it would attack Berchtesgaden. The US Army opposed the attack, however, due to concerns that the complex's rubble would be easier for the Germans to defend than undamaged buildings. Two historians have stated that other factors motivated the raid. Oliver Haller has written the real reason Bomber Command conducted the attack was that Harris wanted to demonstrate that his forces could conduct precision bombing after he was criticised for terror bombing attacks on cities in early 1945. Despina Stratigakos has stated that the Allies hoped that the destruction of the Berghof would convince fanatical Nazis that the war was lost. She has also suggested that the attack aimed to "wipe from memory" the humiliation of the pre-war appeasement policies, including the Munich Agreement, which were associated with the Berghof. The Berghof and the Kehlsteinhaus pavilion, which Hitler had occasionally used to host guests, were the raid's primary targets. Several other buildings were in the area which was to be bombed. These included the houses of other senior Nazis, a barracks used by the Waffen-SS units assigned to defend Obersalzberg and a hospital. Several secondary targets, including bridges in the city of Salzburg, were selected for the crews of aircraft which were unable to bomb Obersalzberg. ## Attack The bomber crews were woken during the early hours of 25 April to be briefed on the mission. The crews were informed that several senior members of the German Government were at Obersalzberg, with some being told that Hitler was there. The attack force took off from bases in the United Kingdom that morning. It comprised 359 Avro Lancaster heavy bombers drawn from 22 squadrons in No. 1 and 5 Groups. They were accompanied by 16 de Havilland Mosquito light bombers from No. 8 Group whose role was to guide the bombers to the target using the Oboe navigation system. The bombers were escorted by 13 British fighter squadrons and 98 North American P-51 Mustang fighters from the Eighth Air Force. After leaving the UK, the bombers passed near Paris. They headed directly towards Obersalzberg upon reaching Lake Constance. While the aircraft were routed over Allied-held territory for most of the approach flight, the last 250 miles (400 km) had to be made over territory still controlled by German forces. They spent only a small amount of time within range of anti-aircraft guns during the approach flight and, as the Luftwaffe had almost ceased to exist, no fighters attempted to intercept them. Some of the Mustang pilots spotted an Arado 234 jet reconnaissance aircraft, and shot it down. The first wave of bombers arrived in the Berchtesgaden area at 9:30 am, but were unable to attack immediately. The Mosquito crews had difficulty spotting the targets due to the presence of mist and snow in the area. Obersalzberg's defenders were unable to generate a smoke screen as they had exhausted their supplies of the necessary chemicals. The Mosquitos' Oboe equipment proved ineffective, as the radio signals it used were blocked by mountains. The bombers orbited until the Mosquito crews marked the target. During this period some of the aircraft flew near Salzburg and were fired on by the city's strong anti-aircraft defences. Several bombers also came close to colliding. Once the target was marked, the first wave of bombers attacked between 9:51 and 10:11 am. The elite No. 617 Squadron RAF was the first unit to strike Obersalzberg, with its aircraft dropping large Tallboy bombs. The second wave bombed between 10:42 and 11:00 am. Over 1,400 long tons (1,400 t) of bombs were released; it was hoped that such a heavy bombardment would be sufficient to destroy the bunkers under Obersalzberg. The bombing was very accurate. Two Lancasters were shot down by German anti-aircraft guns. An aircraft from the Royal Australian Air Force's No. 460 Squadron was hit shortly after dropping its bombs, and all of its crew survived after the pilot made a forced landing near the German town of Traunstein. They were made prisoners of war, but were liberated within days. The other aircraft to be shot down was from No. 619 Squadron RAF. Of the bomber's crew, four were killed and three taken prisoner. These POWs were also soon rescued by Allied forces. Several other Lancasters were damaged, with one landing near Paris. The attack produced mixed results. Of the primary targets, the Kehlsteinhaus was undamaged and the Berghof was moderately damaged by three bombs. The Waffen-SS barracks and the houses owned by Göring and the Reichsleiter Martin Bormann were destroyed. Most of the approximately 3,000 people at Obersalzberg had sheltered in the bunkers below the complex, but 31 were killed, including several children. The bunker network was not seriously damaged. The town of Berchtesgaden was undamaged, and none of its population were killed or wounded. USAAF units attacked transport infrastructure in the general area of Obersalzberg on 25 April. These raids formed part of an operation conducted at the request of the Allied ground forces that targeted the Škoda Works munitions facilities near Pilsen in German-occupied Czechoslovakia as well as railways in Austria which were believed to be transporting German troops. The locations near Obersalzberg that were attacked included Freilassing, Hallein, Bad Reichenhall, Salzburg and Traunstein. Considerable damage was inflicted on several train stations, gasworks and hospitals in these towns. More than 300 civilians were killed. ## Aftermath Obersalzberg was abandoned in the days after the raid. Acting on Hitler's orders, SS personnel destroyed the Berghof before pulling out. The US Army XV Corps captured the area on 4 May. Göring, who had survived the air raid, was taken prisoner by the US Army on 9 May 1945. American and French soldiers looted Obersalzberg, including the ruins of the Berghof, after its capture. Due to Obersalzberg's associations with the Nazi leadership, the extent of this looting was unmatched by that in any other German town occupied by Allied forces. Stratigakos has observed that this contributed to memorabilia associated with Hitler being spread across the world, which partially undermined the air raid's goal of discrediting the Nazi regime. The American photojournalist Lee Miller, who arrived at Obersalzberg shortly after it was captured, commented that "there isn't even a piece left for a museum on the great war criminal, and scattered over the breadth of the world people are forever going to be shown a napkin ring or pickle fork, supposedly used by Hitler". The attack on Obersalzberg was the final combat operation for the majority of the Bomber Command squadrons dispatched. Most of the aircrew involved took satisfaction in attacking Hitler's personal home, though some expressed regret over the casualties incurred. Bomber Command's last raid, an attack on an oil refinery in Norway, was made on the night of 25/26 April. From 26 April until the end of the war on 8 May, Bomber Command aircraft were used to fly liberated prisoners of war to the UK as part of Operation Exodus and drop food to civilians in the Netherlands during Operation Manna. The raid attracted considerable media coverage at the time, but is little remembered today. Contemporary news reports stated that the operation had been of strategic importance as Obersalzberg had been both an alternative command centre and a symbol of the Nazi regime. The attack was portrayed as forming part of the final efforts to defeat Hitler and Germany. Media reports of the bombing also noted Chamberlain's 1938 visit to Obersalzberg. As the Alpine Fortress proved to be a myth, postwar histories, including Harris's memoirs, made little mention of the operation. Obersalzberg remained under the US Army's administration after the war, and a recreation centre for soldiers was established there. The ruins of the Nazi-era buildings attracted neo-Nazi pilgrimages. To stop such visits, the Bavarian Government destroyed the buildings on 30 April 1952, the seventh anniversary of Adolf Hitler's suicide in Berlin. The US Army closed its recreation centre and handed Obersalzberg to the Bavarian Government in 1996, which demolished the other buildings in the area during the early 2000s to make way for a resort complex. The Dokumentationszentrum Obersalzberg museum opened in 1999. This museum covers Obersalzberg's history during the Nazi era. A sign marking the location of the Berghof and explaining its role as a location where key decisions regarding World War II and the Holocaust were made was erected in 2008.

Shannon Lucid

American biochemist and astronaut (born 1943)

Shannon Matilda Wells Lucid (born January 14, 1943) is an American biochemist and retired NASA astronaut. She has flown in space five times, including a prolonged mission aboard the Russian space station Mir in 1996, and is the only American woman to have stayed on Mir. From 1996 to 2007, Lucid held the record for the longest duration spent in space by an American and by a woman. She was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in December 1996, making her the tenth person and the first woman to be accorded the honor. Lucid is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, where she earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1963, a master's degree in biochemistry in 1970, and a PhD in biochemistry in 1973. She was a laboratory technician at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation from 1964 to 1966, a research chemist at Kerr-McGee from 1966 to 1968, and a research associate at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation from 1973 to 1978. In 1978, Lucid was recruited by NASA for astronaut training with NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first class of astronauts to include women. She flew in space five times: on STS-51-G, STS-34, STS-43, STS-58, and her mission to Mir, for which Lucid traveled to the space station on with STS-76 and returned six months later with STS-79. She was the NASA Chief Scientist from 2002 to 2003 and a capsule communicator (CAPCOM) at Mission Control for numerous Space Shuttle missions, including STS-135, the final mission of the Space Shuttle program. Lucid announced her retirement from NASA in 2012. ## Early life Shannon Wells was born in Shanghai, Republic of China, on January 14, 1943, the daughter of Joseph Oscar Wells, a Baptist missionary, and his wife Myrtle, a missionary nurse. Due to America's ongoing war with Japan, when she was six weeks old, the family was detained by the Japanese, who had occupied Shanghai at the time. The three of them were imprisoned in an internment camp but were released during a prisoner exchange later that year. They returned to the United States on the Swedish ocean liner and stayed in the US until the end of the war. After the war ended, the family returned to China but decided to leave again after the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949. They moved to Lubbock, Texas, and then settled in Bethany, Oklahoma, the family's original hometown, where Wells graduated from Bethany High School in 1960. She was fascinated by stories of the American frontier and wanted to become an explorer. She concluded that she had been born too late for this, but discovered the works of Robert Goddard, the American rocket scientist, and decided that she could become a space explorer. Wells sold her bicycle to buy a telescope so she could look at the stars, and began building her own rockets. Shortly after graduating from high school, Wells earned her private pilot's license with instrument and multi-engine ratings and bought a preowned Piper PA-16 Clipper that she used to fly her father to revival meetings. She applied for jobs as a commercial pilot, but was rejected, as women were not yet accepted for training as commercial pilots in the United States. Wells attended Wheaton College in Illinois, where she majored in chemistry. She then transferred to the University of Oklahoma, where she earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1963. She was a teaching assistant in the University of Oklahoma's Department of Chemistry from 1963 to 1964 and a senior laboratory technician at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in Oklahoma City, from 1964 to 1966. She then became a research chemist at Kerr-McGee, an oil company there. At Kerr-McGee she met Michael F. Lucid, a fellow research chemist. They married in 1967, and their first child, Kawai Dawn, was born in 1968. Afterward, Lucid left Kerr-McGee and returned to the University of Oklahoma as graduate assistant in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, where she pursued a master's degree in biochemistry. She sat for her final examinations two days after the birth of her second daughter, Shandara Michelle, in 1970. She went on to earn her PhD in biochemistry in 1973, writing her thesis on the Effect of Cholera Toxin on Phosphorylation and Kinase Activity of Intestinal Epithelial Cells and Their Brush Borders under the supervision of A. Chadwick Cox. She then returned to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation as a research associate. A third child, Michael Kermit, was born in 1975. ## NASA career ### Selection and training On July 8, 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) issued a call for applications for at least 15 pilot candidates and 15 mission specialist candidates. For the first time, new selections would be considered astronaut candidates rather than fully-fledged astronauts until they finished training and evaluation, which was expected to take two years. The enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 reinforced the promise of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to address the persistent and entrenched employment discrimination against women, African Americans and minority groups in American society. While they had never been explicitly precluded from becoming NASA astronauts, none had ever been selected either. This time, minorities and women were encouraged to apply. Lucid's was one of the first of 8,079 applications received. As one of 208 finalists, Lucid was invited to come to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, for a week of interviews, evaluations and examinations, commencing on August 29, 1977. She was part of the third group of twenty applicants to be interviewed, and the first one that included women. The eight women in the group included Rhea Seddon, Anna Sims, Nitza Cintron and Millie Hughes-Wiley. On January 16, 1978, NASA announced the names of the 35 successful candidates, of whom 20 were mission specialist candidates. Of the six women in this first class with female astronauts, Lucid was the only one who was a mother at the time of being selected. George Abbey, the Director of Flight Crew Operations at JSC and the chairman of the selection panel, later stated that this was not taken into consideration during the selection process. Group 8's name for itself was "TFNG". The abbreviation was deliberately ambiguous; for public purposes, it stood for "Thirty-Five New Guys", but within the group itself, it was known to stand for the military phrase, "the fucking new guy", used to denote newcomers to a military unit. Much of the first eight months of their training was in the classroom. Because there were so many of them, the TFNGs did not fit easily into the existing classrooms, so for classroom instruction they were split into two groups, red and blue, led by Rick Hauck and John Fabian respectively. Classroom training was given on a wide variety of subjects, including an introduction to the Space Shuttle program, space flight engineering, astronomy, orbital mechanics, ascent and entry aerodynamics and space flight physiology. Those accustomed to military and academic environments were surprised that subjects were taught, but not tested. Training in geology, a feature of the training of earlier classes, was continued, but the locations visited changed because the focus was now on observations of the Earth rather than the Moon. Astronaut candidates had to complete survival training, be able to swim and scuba dive, and master the basics of aviation safety, as well as the specifics of the spacecraft they would have to fly. Water survival training was conducted with the 3613th Combat Crew Training Squadron at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida and parasail training at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma. On August 31, 1979, NASA announced that the 35 astronaut candidates had completed their training and evaluation, and were now officially astronauts, qualified for selection on space flight crews. Their training, which had been expected to last eighteen to twenty-four months, had been completed in fourteen. That of subsequent classes was shortened to twelve months. Each of the new astronauts specialized in certain aspects of the Space Shuttle program, providing astronaut support and input. Lucid was involved with Spacelab 1 crew training, and the development of the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL) at JSC and Rockwell International's Flight Systems Laboratory (FSL) in Downey, California. She also worked on the Hubble Space Telescope and rendezvous proximity operations. She was at Edwards Air Force Base as a member of the exchange crew for the landing of the STS-5 mission in November 1982. The exchange crew took over from the flight crew after they had landed, and handled the post-flight activities. She was an astronaut support person (ASP) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for the STS-8 mission in August 1983. Also known as a "Cape Crusader", an ASP was an astronaut who supported vehicle and payload testing at KSC, and strapped the flight crew into their seats before takeoff. For the STS-41-B mission in February 1984 she was the backup ASP and once again a member of the exchange crew. ### STS-51-G On November 17, 1983, Lucid was assigned to her first flight, the STS-51-A mission. Tentatively scheduled for October 24, 1984, the mission would be commanded by Daniel Brandenstein, with pilot John O. Creighton and Lucid, Fabian and Steven R. Nagel as mission specialists. She would be the last of the six women in the TFNG group to fly. Due to slippages, the crew was reassigned to the STS-51-D mission in August 1984. This mission had a different payload, and it was scheduled to be launched on March 18, 1985. The mission was scrubbed just three weeks before the launch date. In May 1985 the crew was reassigned to the STS-51-G mission. A French astronaut, Patrick Baudry, and a Saudi Arabian prince, Sultan bin Salman Al Saud were assigned as payload specialists. STS-51-G lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at KSC in the on June 17, 1985. The seven-day mission was to deploy three communications satellites: Morelos I for Mexico, Arabsat-1B for the Arab League, and Telstar 303 for the United States. The satellites were launched on successive days during the first three days of the mission. Lucid and Fabian operated the Remote Manipulator System (RMS) to deploy the satellites, which were boosted into geostationary transfer orbits by Payload Assist Module (PAM-D) booster stages. Lucid also used the RMS to deploy the Spartan (Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy) satellite, which performed 17 hours of X-ray astronomy experiments while separated from the Space Shuttle, while Fabian handled its retrieval 45 hours later. In addition to the satellite deployments, the crew activated the Automated Directional Solidification Furnace (ADSF), six Getaway Specials and participated in biomedical experiments. Discovery landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California on June 24. The mission was accomplished in 112 orbits of the Earth, traveling 4.7 million kilometers (2.9 million miles) in 169 hours and 39 minutes (just over one week). The publicity tour that usually followed a Space Shuttle mission included a trip to Saudi Arabia. Married women were not permitted to travel to Saudi Arabia without their husband, and Michael Lucid was unavailable, so Lucid decided not to go. A devout Christian, she disapproved of the way Saudi Arabia treated women. When the rest of the crew arrived in Riyadh, her absence was noted. This prompted a call from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to President Ronald Reagan. Lucid went to Saudi Arabia and shook hands with the king, but she stayed for only one day. ### STS-34 After the STS-51-G mission, Lucid was assigned to Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) duty. She served as the CAPCOM for the STS-51-J mission in October 1985, the STS-61-A mission in November 1985, STS-61-B mission in November and December 1985, and the STS-61-C mission in January 1986. The January 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster later that month halted Space Shuttle operations for 32 months while NASA conducted investigations and remediation. Flight crews were stood down. One consequence of the disaster was the Galileo project, an unmanned probe to Jupiter, which lost both its launch window and its ride due to the cancelation of the Shuttle-Centaur project. On November 30, 1988, NASA announced that Galileo would be deployed by the on the STS-34 mission, which was scheduled for October 12, 1989. The mission was commanded by Donald E. Williams, with pilot Michael J. McCulley and Lucid, Ellen S. Baker and Franklin Chang-Diaz as mission specialists. The launch was delayed for five days due to a faulty Space Shuttle main engine controller, and then for an additional day due to bad weather. Atlantis lifted off from KSC on October 18. As the lead mission specialist, Lucid was primarily responsible for the Galileo spacecraft, and initiated its deployment by pressing a button to separate Galileo from Atlantis. Galileo was successfully deployed six and a half hours into the flight using the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS). As this was much less powerful than the Shuttle-Centaur upper stage, Galileo had to employ a gravity assist from Venus and two from Earth, and it took six years instead of two for the Galileo to reach Jupiter. "Both Ellen and I sighed a great sigh of relief, because we figured Galileo was not our concern at that point, because we'd gotten rid of it," Lucid reported. "Happiness was an empty payload bay and we got happier and happier as the IUS and Galileo went further away from us." The mission also conducted a five-day Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SSBUV) experiment carried in the cargo bay, and experiments related to growth hormone crystal distribution (GHCD) and polymer morphology (PM), a sensor technology experiment (STEX), a mesoscale lightning experiment (MLE), a Shuttle Student Involvement Program (SSIP) experiment that investigated ice crystal formation in zero gravity, and a ground-based Air Force Maui Optical Station (AMOS) experiment. Lucid and Chang-Diaz operated the PM experiment, which used a laptop computer to collect two gigabytes of data from an infrared spectrometer to study the effects of microgravity on minerals. The crew filmed their activities with an IMAX camera. The mission completed 79 orbits of the Earth, traveling 3.2 million kilometers (2 million miles) in 119 hours and 39 minutes before landing at Edwards Air Force Base on October 23. ### STS-43 In May 1990 NASA announced that Lucid was assigned to the crew of the STS-43 mission, which was scheduled to be flown in Discovery in April 1991. The mission was commanded by John E. Blaha, with Michael A. Baker as the pilot and Lucid, G. David Low, and James C. Adamson as the mission specialists. The objective of the mission was to deploy TDRS-E, a communications satellite that would form part of NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. The launch date was postponed to July 23, and the orbiter was changed to Atlantis. The launch was delayed by a day to replace a faulty integrated electronics assembly that controlled the separation of the orbiter and the external tank, and then the countdown was halted with five hours to go due to a faulty main engine controller, and the launch was postponed to August 1. Unfavorable weather prompted yet another 24-hour delay. Atlantis lifted off on August 2. The crew deployed TDRS-E without incident using the IUS. The crew also conducted 32 physical, material and life science experiments, mostly related to the Extended Duration Orbiter and Space Station Freedom. These included experiments with the Space Station Heat Pipe Advanced Radiator Element II (SHARE II), the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultra-Violet (SSBUV) instrument, Tank Pressure Control Equipment (TPCE), and Optical Communications Through Windows (OCTW). There was also an auroral photography experiment (APE-B), a protein crystal growth experiment, testing of the bioserve / instrumentation technology associates materials dispersion apparatus (BIMDA), investigations into polymer membrane processing (IPMP), the space acceleration measurement system (SAMS), a solid surface combustion experiment (SSCE), use of the ultraviolet plume imager (UVPI); and the Air Force Maui optical site (AMOS) experiment. Atlantis performed 142 orbits of the Earth, traveling 6.0 million kilometers (3.7 million miles) in 213 hours and 21 minutes. STS-43 was the eighth mission to land at KSC, and the first one scheduled to do so since STS-61-C in January 1986. ### STS-58 On December 6, 1991, Lucid was assigned to STS-58, the Spacelab Life Sciences 2 (SLS-2) mission. This was the second mission dedicated to the study of human and animal physiology on Earth and in spaceflight. The techniques developed for this flight were intended to be precursors of those to be conducted on the Space Station Freedom and subsequent long-duration space flights. Fellow TFNG Rhea Seddon was designated as the mission payload commander, with David Wolf, like Seddon a medical doctor, as the other mission specialist. Originally scheduled as one mission, the number of Spacelab Life Sciences objectives and experiments had grown until it was split into two missions, the first of which, STS-40/SLS-1, was flown in June 1991. The rest of the crew were not named until August 27, 1992. Blaha was designated the mission commander, with pilot Richard A. Searfoss and William S. McArthur Jr. as a fourth mission specialist. A payload specialist, Martin J. Fettman, was assigned to the mission on October 29. The with SLS-2 on board lifted off from KSC on October 18, 1993. During the fourteen-day flight the crew performed neurovestibular, cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary, metabolic and musculoskeletal medical experiments on themselves and 48 rats. The crew investigated the phenomenon of bone density loss. They also studied the effects of microgravity on their sensory perception, and the mechanism of space adaptation syndrome. To study this, on the second day of the mission Lucid and Fettman wore headsets, known as accelerometer recording units, which recorded their head movements during the day. Along with Seddon, Wolf and Fettman, Lucid collected blood and urine samples from the crew for metabolic experiments. They also drew blood from the tails of the rats to measure how weightlessness affected their red blood cell counts. They performed sixteen engineering tests aboard Columbia and twenty Extended Duration Orbiter Medical Project experiments. The mission completed 225 orbits of the Earth, traveling five million miles in 336 hours, 13 minutes and 1 second. Landing was at Edwards Air Force Base, California. On completion of this flight, Lucid had logged 838 hours and 54 minutes in space. ### Shuttle–Mir In 1992 the United States and Russia reached an agreement on cooperation in space so that Russian cosmonauts could fly on the Space Shuttles, and American astronauts on the Russian Mir space station. The prospect of a long stay on Mir was not one calculated to appeal to most astronauts: they had to learn Russian and train at Star City for a year to spend several months on board Mir carrying out science experiments with Russian cosmonauts. "I was wondering what it would be like to spend a long period of time in space," Lucid later recalled. "I told everybody I wanted to do it, and they couldn't find anybody else who had volunteered. So they said: 'Well OK, go do it.'" In January 1995 Lucid and Blaha joined fellow astronauts Bonnie Dunbar and Norman Thagard for Mir training in Star City. On March 30, 1995, NASA announced that Lucid would be the second astronaut to stay aboard Mir, after Thagard, who arrived on the space station on March 16. Lucid's mission to Mir commenced on March 22, 1996, with liftoff from KSC aboard Atlantis on the STS-76 mission. Atlantis docked with Mir on March 24, and Lucid became the first American woman to live on the station. She joined cosmonauts Yuri Onufriyenko and Yuri Usachov, neither of whom spoke English. During the course of her stay aboard Mir, Lucid performed numerous life science and physical science experiments. She lit candles to study the behavior of fire in a microgravity environment; studied the way that quail embryos developed in their shells; grew protein crystals; and cultivated wheat in a tiny greenhouse. She injected herself with an immune system stimulant and collected blood and saliva samples to study the effects of microgravity on the immune system. In her free time, she read books. One novel she enjoyed immensely was The Mirror of Her Dreams, but she reached the end only to find that it ended on a cliffhanger. "I floated there, alone in Spectra, in stunned disbelief, holding only volume one," she later recalled. "I was stranded, the impossibility of running to the local bookstore forefront in my mind ... How could my daughter have done this to me? Who would send only one volume of a two-volume set to her mother in space?" She arranged for the second volume to be sent on the next Progress resupply freighter. She left her books on Mir for later astronaut visitors, but they became inaccessible after the Progress M-34 collision in June 1997. Thagard had warned Lucid about the Russians' fondness for jellied fish and borscht. She brought a supply of M\&M's and jello with her, and lived on a combination of Russian and American food. Lucid's return journey to KSC was made aboard Atlantis. The STS-79 mission docked with Mir on September 18, bringing Blaha as her relief, and landed back at KSC on September 26, 1996. One of the catches that released her helmet from the neck ring became stuck, and technicians had to use pliers and a screwdriver to remove it. During her stay on Mir, Lucid had spent nearly 400 hours exercising on a stationary bicycle and a treadmill, and was able to stand and walk off Atlantis. Administrator of NASA Daniel Goldin presented her with a giftwrapped box of M\&M's, a gift from President Bill Clinton, since she had told him that she craved them. In completing this mission Lucid traveled 121.0 million kilometers (75.2 million miles) in 188 days, 4 hours, 0 minutes. This included 179 days on Mir. Her stay on Mir was not expected to last so long but her return was delayed twice, extending her stay by about six weeks. As a result of her time aboard Mir, she held the record for the most hours in orbit by a non-Russian, and most hours in orbit by a woman until June 16, 2007, when her record for longest duration spaceflight by a woman was exceeded by Sunita Williams on the International Space Station. ### CAPCOM Lucid had a short cameo in the 1998 film Armageddon. From 2002 to 2003, she served as Chief Scientist of NASA. Starting in 2005, she served as lead CAPCOM on the Planning (overnight) shift at the Mission Control for sixteen Space Shuttle missions, including STS-135, the final mission. On January 31, 2012, she announced her retirement from NASA. ## Later life Lucid retired from NASA to take care of her husband Mike, who had dementia. He died on December 25, 2014. She later wrote about this experience in her book No Sugar Added: One Family's Saga of Dementia and Caretaking (2019). She wrote about her experiences on Mir in Tumbleweed: Six Months Living on Mir (2020). ## Awards and honors Lucid was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in December 1996 (for her mission to Mir), making her the tenth person and first woman to be given this honor. She was also awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal in 1985, 1989 (twice), 1991, 1993 and 1996; the NASA Exceptional Service Medal in 1988, 1990, 1992 and 2003 (twice); and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1994 and 1997. She was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1990, the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame in 1993, the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1998, and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2002 Discover magazine recognized her as one of the fifty most important women in science.

Milos Raonic

Canadian tennis player (born 1990)

Milos Raonic (Serbian: Милош Раонић, Miloš Raonić, ; born December 27, 1990) is a Canadian professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as world No. 3 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), making him the highest-ranked Canadian player in history. Raonic is the first Canadian man in the Open Era to reach the Wimbledon final, the Australian Open semifinals, and the French Open quarterfinals. He has won eight ATP Tour titles. Raonic's career highlights include a Major final at the 2016 Wimbledon Championships; two semifinals at the 2014 Wimbledon Championships and 2016 Australian Open; and four ATP World Tour Masters 1000 finals at the 2013 Canadian Open, 2014 Paris Masters, 2016 Indian Wells Masters, and the 2020 Cincinnati Masters. Raonic first gained widespread recognition by reaching the fourth round of the 2011 Australian Open as a qualifier, where he was said to be the future of professional tennis. Coupled with his first ATP Tour title three weeks later, his world ranking rose from No. 152 to No. 37 in one month, and he was awarded the 2011 ATP Newcomer of the Year. Raonic is the first player born in the 1990s to be ranked in the top 10 and to qualify for the ATP finals. Raonic is frequently described as having one of the best serves among his contemporaries. Statistically, Raonic is one of the best servers in the Open Era, winning 91% of service games to rank third of all time. Aided by his serve, he plays an all-court style with an emphasis on short points. All his singles titles have been won on hardcourts. His overall winning percentage of 68% is one of the highest among currently active players. ## Early and personal life Raonic was born on December 27, 1990, in Titograd, SFR Yugoslavia (now Podgorica, Montenegro), and is of Montenegrin heritage. Prompted by the breakup of Yugoslavia and subsequent ethnic conflict, and seeking more professional opportunities, his family moved to Canada in 1994 when he was three, settling in Brampton, Ontario. His parents are both engineers; his father, Dušan, holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, while his mother, Vesna, has degrees in mechanical and computer engineering, including a master's. He has two older siblings: his sister, Jelena, is eleven years older, while his brother, Momir, is nine years older. Raonic's uncle, Branimir Gvozdenović, is a politician in the Government of Montenegro, where he has served as Deputy Prime Minister. Raonic is fluent in Montenegrin and English. His first, brief introduction to tennis came at age six or seven with a week-long tennis camp at the Bramalea Tennis Club in Brampton, followed by weekly hour-long group sessions led by tennis coach Steve Gibson, who recognized his potential. He moved to nearby Thornhill, Ontario soon after, and one or two years passed before he asked his parents if he could play again. His father sought out coach Casey Curtis at the Blackmore Tennis Club in neighbouring Richmond Hill, Ontario. Curtis was at first reluctant to take on Raonic, but was convinced after Raonic demonstrated his commitment by working with his father and a ball machine daily for two months. Years later, Raonic said he chose tennis because of its "individuality and [because he] felt [he] could train more alone and on a ball machine with [his] dad". Raonic and Curtis worked together "twice a day, almost every day, for the next nine years." Provided that he complete his courses, Raonic was allowed to reduce his hours of attendance at Thornhill Elementary School so that he could practise more, which he did both before and after school. His parents and siblings supported his tennis, taking turns driving him to practice and tournaments, but did not push him to it or interfere with coaching. Rather, they emphasized school throughout, insisting that he maintain academic excellence as a prerequisite to playing tennis. He attended Thornhill Secondary School, and accelerated his course load—achieving an 82 percent average—so that he could graduate a year early. Late in 2007, at the age of 16, Raonic moved to Montreal as one of the first group of players at Tennis Canada's new National Tennis Centre, thus marking the end of his formal relationship with Curtis. Raonic's four favourite sports teams are FC Barcelona, the Toronto Blue Jays, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the Toronto Raptors. He played in the 2016 NBA All-Star Celebrity Game held in Toronto. He worked for Rogers Sportsnet as an analyst while recovering from injury for their broadcast of the 2011 Canadian Open. In November 2011, Raonic won an exhibition match against his childhood idol, Pete Sampras, which was dubbed "The Face Off." In 2012, he took up residence in Monte Carlo, Monaco in a 50 metre² (538 sq ft) apartment, located minutes away from the Monte Carlo Country Club—his "home" tennis club and the site of the Monte-Carlo Masters tournament—and Stade Louis II, which he uses for off-court training. Raonic was in a relationship with Canadian model Danielle Knudson. In April 2022 Raonic married in Italy model Camille Ringoir. ## Career ### Amateur career Raonic first competed at a junior event sanctioned by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) in October 2003 at the age of 12. Milos partnered fellow Canadian Cameron Chiang and made it to the finals of the Benjamin Open in Bordeaux, France. Two years later, in October 2005, he picked up his first singles match victory at age 14. His first juniors titles in both singles and doubles came at the same Grade 4 tournament in October 2006. Later that year, he won the Prince Cup doubles title, partnering fellow Canadian Vasek Pospisil for the first time at an ITF event. Pospisil and Raonic partnered at four more junior tournaments, including the 2008 Wimbledon Championships and the 2008 French Open, reaching the semifinals in the latter. His most notable titles as a junior were in doubles, winning two Grade 1 events in 2008 partnered with Bradley Klahn. Over five years, Raonic compiled a 53–30 win–loss record in singles, and a 56–24 record in doubles on the ITF Junior Circuit. Except for reaching the semifinals at the 2008 French Open in doubles, Raonic did not advance past the second round of junior Grand Slam events. His career-high combined junior ranking, which considers both singles and doubles results, was No. 35. While an amateur, Raonic played in fourteen professional tournaments against adults in North America: ten ITF Futures events at the bottom tier of professional tennis; three ATP Challenger Tour events at the middle tier; and one ATP World Tour event at the top tier. He played his first professional circuit match in the qualifying draw of an ITF Futures tournament in Toronto in October 2005 at the age of 14; he won his first professional circuit main draw match at an ITF Futures tournament in Gatineau, Quebec, in March 2007 against Fabrice Martin. With the win, Raonic earned his first world ranking of No. 1518. He played his first professional circuit doubles match at the same tournament, partnered with Pospisil again. Raonic lost his first ATP Challenger Tour match in Granby, Quebec, in July 2007 against Gary Lugassy. Raonic won his first ITF Futures doubles title in Gatineau, Quebec in March 2008, and reached his first ITF Futures singles final two weeks later in Sherbrooke, Quebec. He received a wildcard to the qualifying tournament of the 2008 Canadian Open, but lost in the first round to Alexander Kudryavtsev. The match was his first in the ATP World Tour. By the summer of 2008, Raonic had received scholarship offers from several colleges, including the University of Michigan, Princeton, and Northwestern University, and committed to play for the University of Virginia that fall while studying finance. Just two weeks before school started, he consulted his parents about his plan to turn professional instead. Raonic and his parents agreed that he would take correspondence courses in finance from Athabasca University while starting a professional tennis career, setting a deadline of two years for reaching the top 100. During that summer, his world ranking ranged between No. 915 and No. 937. Raonic reached the top 100 in January 2011, around five months later than the target deadline. He thus turned down the scholarships and turned professional, agreeing to be represented by the sports agency SFX. University of Virginia men's tennis coach Brian Boland later commented that "I have only seen two guys turn down scholarships and then succeed quickly on the Tour: Sam Querrey and Milos Raonic." ### 2008–2010: Early professional years After turning professional in September 2008 until the end of 2010, Raonic played both singles and doubles, primarily at ITF Futures and ATP Challenger tournaments. He won his first ITF Futures singles title in March 2009 in Montreal. He added three more singles titles and five doubles titles at the ITF Futures level in 2009 and 2010. He was less successful at the ATP Challenger level, tallying only one title. In his fourth tournament after turning professional, Raonic won the doubles title at the Men's Rimouski Challenger in November 2008, partnered with Pospisil. At the ATP World Tour level, Raonic gained entry into few tournaments, compiling a main draw record of three wins and five losses over nearly two and half years. In 2009, Raonic again received a wildcard for the qualifying tournament of the Canadian Open. This time, he beat No. 77 Teymuraz Gabashvili and No. 113 Michaël Llodra to qualify for the main draw of an ATP World Tour tournament for the first time. In the first round, he held a match point, but lost to No. 10 Fernando González in three sets. The matches against Gabashvili and González were the first singles matches for Raonic against a top 100 player and top 10 player, respectively. A year later, at the 2010 Canadian Open, Raonic and Pospisil were given a doubles wildcard to the main draw, marking Raonic's first ever ATP World Tour doubles match. They won their first round match against Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. It was first time that the world Nos. 1 and 2 had played together in a tour doubles match since Jimmy Connors and Arthur Ashe did so in 1976. In the second round, Raonic and Pospisil lost to reigning Wimbledon doubles champions Jürgen Melzer and Philipp Petzschner. After the match, Raonic said: "Our goal here is pretty much as ambassadors to Canada. The more players that we can get to come, the more people we can get going to take tennis lessons." Less than a month later, Raonic gained entry into a Grand Slam tournament for the first time at the 2010 US Open. He qualified for the main draw, but lost in the first round to Carsten Ball. Raonic's first ATP main draw singles victory came in September 2010 at the Malaysian Open against No. 105 Igor Kunitsyn. He followed this with a second round victory over No. 31 Sergiy Stakhovsky. The following week, Raonic lost in the second round of the 2010 Japan Open to No. 1 Nadal. This marked his first singles match against a player ranked No. 1, and his first singles match against a member of the Big Four—a quartet of dominant tennis players including Nadal, Djokovic, Roger Federer, and Andy Murray. Raonic's coaching relationship evolved during his early professional years. Since late 2007, Raonic had been working with Tennis Canada coaches—including Guillaume Marx, Head Boys National Coach—based out of the National Training Centre at Jarry Park in Montreal. In November 2009, with Raonic's world ranking at No. 377, Tennis Canada hired recently retired former player Frédéric Niemeyer to coach Raonic and travel with him for 18 weeks during the 2010 season. Toward the end of 2010, however, Niemeyer decided to travel less owing to "family considerations." As a result, Tennis Canada arranged for a two-week trial period with former No. 40 Galo Blanco in co-operation with Niemeyer, including tournaments in Malaysia and Japan in late September and early October. Over this period, Raonic climbed from No. 237 to No. 155. Tennis Canada hired Blanco, and Raonic moved to Barcelona to train with Blanco and trainer Tony Estalella. Commenting on the training regiment, Blanco said "the off-season Milos had this winter in Barcelona was amazing. We never saw anything like that before, working the way he worked for six weeks." ### 2011: Top 25 and first ATP Tour title The first two months of 2011 represented a significant breakthrough for Raonic, as he rose from No. 156 at the beginning of January to No. 37 by the end of February. In doing so, he became the highest-ranked Canadian male ever. He began this climb by qualifying for the Australian Open main draw. His first round victory over Björn Phau marked his first victory in a main draw Grand Slam match. In the second round, he defeated No. 22 seed Llodra, becoming the first Canadian man in 10 years to reach the third round of a Grand Slam singles tournament. With his career-first victory over a top 10 player (Mikhail Youzhny) in the third round, he became the first qualifier to make the fourth round of a major since Marcelo Filippini at the 1999 French Open. Despite losing in the fourth round to No. 7 David Ferrer, Raonic received rave reviews for his Australian Open performance. Patrick McEnroe said "Raonic [is] the real deal". BBC Sport referred to Raonic as part of "a new generation". Martina Navratilova referred to Raonic as "a new star" saying that "the sky is the limit". The Sydney Morning Herald referred to Raonic as a "future superstar". Two weeks later, Raonic won his first ATP title at the Pacific Coast Championships, with victories over No. 45 Xavier Malisse, No. 170 James Blake, No. 74 Ričardas Berankis, and No. 9 Fernando Verdasco. With the victory, he became the first player born in the 1990s to win an ATP title, and the youngest winner since Marin Čilić won the 2008 Connecticut Open at age 19. Raonic's victory was the first ATP title by a Canadian since Greg Rusedski in 1995. The following week, Raonic reached the final of an ATP 500 tournament for the first time at the U.S. National Indoor Tennis Championships. He defeated Verdasco for the second time in three days in the first round, and No. 17 Mardy Fish in the semifinal. In the final, he lost in three sets to No. 8 Roddick, with Roddick making a diving forehand to break serve for the match on his fifth championship point. Roddick stated: "That's the best shot I've ever hit in my life, considering the circumstance." With his improved ranking (No. 37), Raonic earned direct entry to Grand Slam tournaments and other ATP World Tour events for the first time. He reached the third round at both the Indian Wells Masters and the Monte-Carlo Masters. In May, Raonic rose to a new career-high ranking of No. 25. He was seeded for the first time at a Grand Slam event at the French Open, but lost in the first round to Michael Berrer. At the Halle Open, Raonic reached his first ATP World Tour doubles final, partnered with Robin Haase. The pair lost to Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi in the deciding super tiebreak. During his second round singles match at Wimbledon against Gilles Müller, Raonic retired with an early lead after injuring his right hip when he slipped and fell on the grass. He underwent hip surgery which prevented him from competing until September. His only significant result in the latter half of 2011 after returning from injury was a semifinal appearance at the Stockholm Open, where he lost to Gaël Monfils. ### 2012: Continued rise and first title defence Raonic began 2012 with titles in two of his first three tournaments, starting with his second ATP title at the Chennai Open in India. He had back-to-back wins over top 10 players at a tournament for the first time, beating Nicolás Almagro in the semifinals and Janko Tipsarević in the final. Raonic held serve during the entire tournament, becoming the first player to do so since Federer at the 2008 Halle Open. He lost in the third round of the Australian Open to Lleyton Hewitt. In February, Raonic defended his title at the Pacific Coast Championships, defeating Denis Istomin in the final for his third ATP title. The following week in Memphis, Raonic reached the final of the U.S. National Indoor Tennis Championships for the second straight year, but lost to Melzer. In the spring, Raonic played his first three matches against No. 3 Federer on three different surfaces: hard court in the third round of the Indian Wells Masters; clay in the second round at the Madrid Open; and grass in the quarterfinals at the Halle Open. On each occasion, Raonic won the first set before losing the next two. After the Halle Open match, Federer remarked: "I am happy to have beaten him now because by the end of my career, he'll be serving at 300 km/h." He defeated No. 4 Murray in straight sets in the quarterfinals at the Barcelona Open. This marked his first victory over a member of the Big Four. In the semifinal, he lost to No. 6 Ferrer. Raonic lost to Juan Mónaco in the third round of the French Open, and followed this with a second round loss to Querrey at Wimbledon. Raonic reached his first ATP 1000 quarterfinals at back-to-back events in August, losing to John Isner at the Canadian Open and Stan Wawrinka at the Cincinnati Masters. His loss to Wawrinka followed his victory over No. 7 Tomáš Berdych, his fourth top 10 victory of the year. On August 13, his world ranking was No. 19, marking his first time in the top 20. At the US Open, Raonic lost in the fourth round to eventual champion Murray. Raonic was the first Canadian male to reach the fourth round of the US Open since Laurendeau in 1988. In October at the Japan Open, Raonic reached his third ATP 500 final, defeating Radek Štěpánek, Viktor Troicki, Tipsarević, and Murray, before dropping the final to Japan's Kei Nishikori in three sets. His victories over Tipsarević and Murray marked the third time he won back-to-back matches against top 10 players. In 2012, Raonic led the ATP in points won on 1st serve (82%) and in service games won (93%). He finished the year at a career high singles ranking of No. 13. His six victories over top 10 players in 2012, including two over Murray, marks a career-high. ### 2013: Top 10 ranking and first Masters 1000 final In all four 2013 Grand Slam tournaments, Raonic matched his previous best result. He reached the fourth round of the Australian Open, falling to No. 2 Federer. At the French Open, he lost in the third round to Kevin Anderson. At Wimbledon, he lost in the second round to Igor Sijsling. At the US Open, he fell to No. 9 Richard Gasquet in the fourth round in a five-set thriller, despite a career-high 39 aces. Raonic again achieved success at ATP 250 and ATP 500 events. In February, Raonic earned his third consecutive title at the Pacific Coast Championships, defeating Tommy Haas in the final. Over three years, he achieved a perfect 12–0 match record, and did not drop a single set. He is the only man in the Open Era to win three consecutive singles titles at this event. In September, he won the Thailand Open tournament, defeating No. 9 Gasquet in the semifinals and No. 6 Berdych in the final. The titles were Raonic's fourth and fifth, both coming in ATP 250 events like previous titles. In October, Raonic reached the Japan Open final for the second consecutive year, but lost a close match to No. 7 Juan Martín del Potro. It marked his fourth consecutive loss in the final of an ATP 500 event. In eight of the nine ATP 1000 events, Raonic matched or improved on his career-best performance. This included his first ATP 1000 series final at the Canadian Open in August. During his third round victory over del Potro, Raonic was awarded a point even though his foot touched the net. He did not report his error to the umpire, and won the last nine points to close out the match. Raonic later admitted that he was wrong not to admit his error at the time: "I made a mistake in the spur of the moment ... I'm disappointed with myself, how I dealt with it." After beating Ernests Gulbis in the quarterfinals, Raonic defeated compatriot Pospisil in the semifinals. The match against Pospisil was the first all-Canadian semifinal in an ATP 1000 tournament. In the final, he lost to Nadal in just 68 minutes. Following the tournament, Raonic was ranked No. 10, becoming the first Canadian player and the first player born in the 1990s to break into the top 10. In 2013, Raonic again led the ATP in points won on first serve (82%) and in service games won (91%). He had 45 match victories for the second consecutive year. His coaching team underwent significant changes in 2013. In May, Raonic split with his coach of two and half years, Blanco. Less than a month later, Raonic hired former No. 3 tennis player Ivan Ljubičić as his coach. In December, he hired Riccardo Piatti as a co-coach with Ljubičić. ### 2014: First Grand Slam semifinal Raonic opened 2014 by reaching the third round of the Australian Open, losing to Grigor Dimitrov. He sustained an ankle injury that kept him out of action for six weeks. From March through May, Raonic improved on his career-best performance at five consecutive ATP 1000 events. At the Indian Wells Masters, he beat No. 6 Murray to reach the quarterfinals, losing to Alexandr Dolgopolov. He lost in the quarterfinals of the Miami Masters to Nadal. He reached the quarterfinals for the third ATP 1000 tournament in a row at the Monte-Carlo Masters, before falling to Wawrinka. The result garnered Raonic a career-high ranking as world No. 9. Raonic lost in the third round of the Madrid Open to Nishikori. At the Italian Open, Raonic defeated Jérémy Chardy in the quarterfinals to reach his first Masters 1000 semifinal on clay. After winning the first set, he lost his semifinal match to eventual champion Djokovic. Although he had played Djokovic in the 2013 Davis Cup, this was their first ATP match against one another. At the French Open, Raonic was seeded in the top eight for the first time at a Grand Slam tournament. He notched victories against Nick Kyrgios, Jiří Veselý, Gilles Simon, and Marcel Granollers to reach the quarterfinals of a major for the first time in his career, becoming the first Canadian man to do so in the Open Era. He lost in the quarterfinals to Djokovic in straight sets. After the match, Raonic commented: "I've gone farther in a Slam than I have before and I've learned things even from this loss." At Wimbledon, Raonic was again seeded eighth. He defeated Matthew Ebden, Jack Sock, Łukasz Kubot, Nishikori, and Kyrgios to reach his first major semifinal. He became the first Canadian men's singles player to reach the semifinals at a major since Robert Powell in 1908. In the quarterfinal victory against Kyrgios, Raonic tied a career-high with 39 aces. In the semifinals, Raonic lost to Federer in straight sets. After the match, Raonic reflected: "There's a lot of good things to take from it. ... But when you get here to this point, I think it's just human nature, the greed of human nature, that you want so much more. You feel it in front of you and you want to grab it." Despite the loss, Raonic saw his world ranking improve to a career-high No. 6. In his next tournament, Raonic reached his first final of the year at the Washington Open, facing Pospisil in the first all-Canadian final in ATP history. Raonic won the title in straight sets. It was his first ATP 500 title, after finishing as runner-up in four previous ATP 500 tournaments. After reaching the quarterfinals at the Canadian Open and the semifinals at the Cincinnati Masters, he claimed the men's 2014 US Open Series. At the US Open, Raonic was seeded fifth. He won his first three matches to face rival Nishikori in the fourth round. On the morning of September 2, Raonic and Nishikori tied the all-time latest finish for a match at the US Open, ending at 2:26 a.m. This tied previous matches between Mats Wilander and Mikael Pernfors in 1993, and between Isner and Philipp Kohlschreiber in 2012. The five set match lasted 4 hours and 19 minutes, with Raonic losing and Nishikori advancing to the quarterfinals. In October, Raonic reached the final of the Japan Open for the third consecutive year, but lost to Nishikori again. Three years prior, in 2011, Raonic had set a personal goal of reaching the year-end ATP Finals, where only the top eight players earned a spot. Heading into the last ATP 1000 event of 2014, the Paris Masters, Raonic trailed Ferrer for the eighth spot, and needed a deep run to surpass him. He beat Sock and Roberto Bautista Agut to set up a quarterfinals match against No. 2 Federer, who had beaten him in all six previous meetings. Needing a win to avoid being eliminated from contention for the ATP Finals, Raonic won in straight sets. His victory was hailed as "a career-defining win." In the post-match interview, Raonic was asked to rank this victory in his career. He replied: "Considering all the circumstances around it, I think this was the biggest win for me." He went on to beat No. 5 Berdych in the semifinals to earn a spot in the second ATP 1000 final of his career. He lost to Djokovic in the final, but secured his place in the 2014 ATP Finals. He is the first Canadian to reach the ATP Finals, and the first player born in the 1990s to do so. Anticlimactically, Raonic withdrew from the tournament due to a leg-muscle tear prior to his match against Nishikori, after losses to Federer and Murray. Raonic ended the year at a career-high season-ending ranking of No. 8. He was one of just three players to reach the quarterfinals or better at seven of the nine ATP 1000 tournaments. Raonic finished with a career-high total of 1107 aces in 2014. At the time, this was the fifth highest single-year ace total in history. (It was surpassed by both Ivo Karlović and Isner in 2015.) ### 2015: Top 4 ranking and injury woes Raonic began 2015 by reaching the final at the Brisbane International after defeating No. 5 Nishikori in three sets, all decided in tiebreaks. He lost to No. 2 Federer in three sets, with Federer recording his 1,000th match win on the professional tour. Later in the month, he reached the quarterfinals of the Australian Open after beating No. 12 Feliciano López. He lost to Djokovic in straight sets. At the Indian Wells Masters, Raonic won his quarterfinal match against No. 3 Nadal, after saving three match points from Nadal in the second set tiebreak. It was Raonic's first career victory over Nadal after five defeats. He lost to Federer in the semifinals. In April, Raonic opened the Monte-Carlo Masters with a victory over João Sousa. Just one game into his second-round match against Tommy Robredo, Raonic called for a medical timeout due to a right foot injury. Although he went on to win the match, Raonic's manager indicated that Raonic had made a pre-existing injury worse by playing. In his quarterfinal match against Berdych, he complained of numbness in his right foot during a medical timeout, and retired while trailing 2–5 in the opening set. It was diagnosed as a pinched nerve, and Raonic was expected to be healthy for the Madrid Open. In Madrid, Raonic advanced to the quarterfinals with straight sets victories over Mónaco and Leonardo Mayer. After Raonic lost in the quarterfinals against Murray, Murray observed that Raonic was "struggling [with injury]." Following the match, Raonic announced that he would undergo surgery to repair a nerve in his foot, targeting a return in time for the French Open. Ironically, Raonic's world ranking reached a new career-high of No. 4 the following week, the highest by a Canadian man or woman. Following surgery, Raonic withdrew from the Italian Open and the French Open. He returned in time for the grass court season. Having played in Halle in previous years, Raonic elected to play at the Queen's Club Championships for the first time. Raonic lost in the quarterfinals in his Queen's debut, and lost in the third round at Wimbledon. After his Wimbledon loss to Kyrgios, Raonic commented that his foot injury had led to problems throughout his body: "There wasn't a place it wasn't [bothering me]... First ankle, then the hip, and then the back. Then when those things aren't working, you just put too much pressure on your shoulder, and then your shoulder hurts." The cascading injuries led to a withdrawal from Canada's Davis Cup tie against Belgium; a withdrawal from the Washington Open, where Raonic was the defending champion; first round losses at the Canadian Open and Cincinnati Masters; and a third round loss at the US Open to López. In September, at the St. Petersburg Open, Raonic won his seventh singles title—and first in Europe—with a three-set victory over Sousa. His serve was broken just once in the entire tournament. After early losses at the China Open and Shanghai Masters, Raonic ended his ATP season by withdrawing from three consecutive tournaments, citing injury. On November 2, he fell outside the top 10, dropping to No. 14. After six weeks off, Raonic joined the Philippine Mavericks of the exhibition International Premier Tennis League (IPTL) in December. After four matches, he withdrew due to back spasms. In late November, Raonic parted ways with both Ljubičić, who had been his coach since June 2013, and Austin Nunn, who had been his media manager for nearly four years. Ljubičić was added to Federer's coaching team two weeks later. Raonic contacted former No. 1 tennis player Carlos Moyá about a coaching relationship, and they trained together and had discussions during the IPTL events. The relationship was subsequently formalized and on January 1, 2016, Raonic announced that Moyá would join his coaching team alongside Piatti. Raonic said that he chose Moyá for three reasons: "Carlos is very laid back and positive [... and] he communicates well." ### 2016: First Grand Slam final and top 3 ranking Raonic reached the final of the Brisbane International against No. 3 Federer in a rematch of their 2015 final. This time, Raonic upset Federer in straight sets, winning his eighth career title. Asked to talk about Raonic after the match, Federer observed: "[F]or a big guy he moves well ... He's improved his fitness the last few years. Also, tactically, I think he's better now than he's ever been. He's made a conscious effort of playing close to the baseline, which before when he was working with the Spanish coaches he was way back." In the fourth round of the Australian Open, he upset No. 4 Wawrinka in five sets, beating the 2014 champion for the first time in five meetings. He then beat Monfils in the quarterfinals to advance to the semifinals of the Australian Open for the first time in his career. He became the first Canadian man to reach the Australian Open semifinals. In the semifinals, he lost to No. 2 Murray in five sets, sustaining an adductor injury while leading two sets to one. After the match, he reflected that the loss was "probably the most heartbroken [he has] felt on court." The adductor injury kept Raonic out of competition for six weeks, during which he withdrew from the Delray Beach Open and the Mexican Open, and Canada's Davis Cup clash with France. He returned to action at the Indian Wells Masters, reaching the final against No. 1 Djokovic with a string of four victories over top 20 opponents: Bernard Tomic, Berdych, Monfils, and David Goffin. In the semifinal victory over Goffin, Raonic's average second serve (112 mph) was faster than Goffin's average first serve (110 mph). Before the final, Djokovic said: "Milos is probably playing the best tennis that he has ever played. His serve was phenomenal before the start of this season, but it seems like he has improved even more, especially the second serve. He's going for it more. He's not giving you the same look." Raonic lost a lopsided straight sets match to Djokovic in the final, his third consecutive loss in an ATP 1000 final. Raonic followed Indian Wells by reaching the quarterfinals at the next three ATP 1000 events in Miami, Monte Carlo, and Madrid, eventually losing to Kyrgios, Murray, and Djokovic, respectively. On May 2, he re-entered the top 10 at No. 10. Raonic continued the clay court season with a second-round loss at the Italian Open to Kyrgios. At the French Open, he was the eighth seed, but fell in the fourth round in straight sets to No. 55 Albert Ramos Viñolas. During the French Open, former No. 1 and three-time Wimbledon champion John McEnroe announced that he would join Raonic's team as a consultant for the grass court season. Commenting on McEnroe joining Moyá and Piatti on his coaching team, Raonic said: "I was sort of just looking for another set of eyes to be a bit more efficient on grass" and he said it was about "generally improving." McEnroe left Raonic's team in August. Raonic began the grass court season by advancing to his first grass court final at the Queen's Club Championships without dropping serve in victories over Kyrgios, Veselý, Bautista Agut, and Tomic, but lost the final in three sets to Murray. At Wimbledon, Raonic won his first three matches in straight sets against Pablo Carreño Busta, Andreas Seppi, and Sock. In the fourth round against Goffin, Raonic came back from a two set deficit to win in five sets for the first time in his career. In ten previous best-of-five matches where he lost the first two sets, he also lost the third set. Raonic then beat Querrey in the quarterfinals and Federer in the semifinals, marking Federer's first defeat in 11 Wimbledon semifinals. With the victory, Raonic reached his first Grand Slam final, matching Greg Rusedski. In the final, he lost to Murray in straight sets, though he made the fastest serve of the tournament at 147 miles per hour (237 km/h). With the transition to hard courts after Wimbledon, Raonic made the quarterfinals of the Canadian Open, losing to Monfils, before falling to Murray for the fifth time in 2016 in the Cincinnati Masters semifinal. Raonic was the fifth seed at the US Open, but lost in the second round to Ryan Harrison, partly due to debilitating cramps. In September, cramps were cited as the reason for Raonic to miss Canada's Davis Cup tie against Chile. Later that month, Raonic failed to defend his title at the St. Petersburg Open, falling in his opening match to Youzhny. Raonic withdrew from the China Open prior to his semifinal match due to an ankle injury sustained in the quarterfinal. With the result, Raonic qualified for the ATP World Tour Finals for the second time. Raonic suffered another injury, a quadriceps tear, during his quarterfinal match against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at the Paris Masters and withdrew before his scheduled semifinal against Murray. At the ATP World Tour Finals, Raonic lost to Djokovic, but beat Monfils and Thiem in round robin play to qualify for his first Tour Finals semifinal. He lost the semifinal match to Murray in 3 hours and 38 minutes, the longest match on the ATP Tour in 2016 and the longest match in World Tour Finals history. Raonic rose to a career-high No. 3, finishing the year behind only Murray and Djokovic. In December, he ended his coaching relationship with Moya, and added former Wimbledon champion Richard Krajicek to his coaching staff alongside Piatti for the 2017 season. ### 2017: More injuries and out of top 20 At his first tournament of the season, the Brisbane International, Raonic reached the semifinals with wins over Diego Schwartzman and Rafael Nadal in the first two rounds. He lost to Grigor Dimitrov in straight sets. At the Australian Open, he won his first two matches in straight sets respectively over Dustin Brown and Gilles Müller. In the third and fourth rounds, he defeated Gilles Simon and then Roberto Bautista Agut both in four sets. Though Raonic failed to get past eventual finalist Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals, this result marked the third year in a row that Milos made at least the quarterfinals at this tournament. At his next tournament in February, he reached the final in Delray Beach, giving Jack Sock a walkover in the final due to a hamstring tear in his right leg. Returning from injury at the Miami Open in March, Raonic defeated Viktor Troicki in his opening round but had to withdraw from his next match against qualifier Jared Donaldson, again with the hamstring injury. In May, Raonic advanced to his second final of the season, losing to Marin Čilić in Istanbul. He lost in the fourth round of the French Open to Pablo Carreño Busta in a five-set marathon. At Wimbledon, he made it to the quarterfinals but was defeated by Roger Federer in straight sets. After his run at Wimbledon, he only played two more tournaments, losing in the quarterfinals in Washington, D.C. to Jack Sock and in the second round in Montreal to Adrian Mannarino. He then had to withdraw from various tournaments, including the US Open, due to injury. Raonic returned in October at the Japan Open but had to retire in his second round match against Yūichi Sugita again with an injury. Although he reached two finals in 2017, it was the first time since 2011 that he failed to win at least one title. ### 2018: Return to top 20 After ending his 2017 season early, Raonic dropped to No. 24. He began his season at the Brisbane International as the fourth seed. He lost in the second round to Alex de Minaur in straight sets. Raonic then went on to compete at the 2018 Australian Open, where he lost in the opening round to Lukáš Lacko in four sets. This was Raonic's second time overall that he lost in the first round of a Grand Slam and the first time since the 2011 French Open. This also meant that he would fall out of the top 30 for the first time since February 2011. Raonic's next tournament was the Delray Beach Open. He easily beat Taro Daniel in the first round but went on to lose to Steve Johnson in straight sets in the next round. At Indian Wells, Raonic reached his first Masters 1000 semifinal since November 2016 in Paris with wins over compatriot Félix Auger-Aliassime, João Sousa, Marcos Baghdatis by walkover and Sam Querrey, respectively in the first rounds. He was defeated by Juan Martín del Potro in straight sets. The next week at the Miami Open, Raonic advanced to the quarterfinals but lost for the second week in a row to del Potro, this time in three close sets. He did not compete at the French Open because of a knee injury. In June at the Stuttgart Open, he advanced to his first final in over a year, but was defeated by world No. 2 Roger Federer. At Wimbledon, he advanced to the quarterfinals, but lost to John Isner. ### 2019: Fourth Australian Open quarterfinal Raonic was seeded 16th at the 2019 Australian Open. He defeated Nick Kyrgios in the first round in straight sets and narrowly defeated 2014 champion Stan Wawrinka in four close tiebreak sets in the second round. In the third, he defeated Pierre-Hugues Herbert. In the fourth round, he faced fourth seed Alexander Zverev. He started the match dominantly, winning 12 of the first 14 games to take a two-set lead. Zverev played a competitive third set, but Raonic ultimately won in a tiebreak. In the quarterfinals, he lost to 28th seed Lucas Pouille in four sets. He announced his split with coach Goran Ivanišević, and will now be coached by French former ATP player Fabrice Santoro. ### 2020: Fifth Australian Open quarterfinal, Fourth Masters 1000 final Raonic started his 2020 at the Qatar Open in Doha where he was seeded 4th. However, in his first match he lost to Corentin Moutet in straight sets. Raonic then participated in 2020 Australian Open, where he defeated Lorenzo Giustino, Cristian Garín, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Marin Čilić before losing to Novak Djokovic at the quarter-final stage in straight sets. In February 2020, Raonic participated in New York Open where he was seeded second, but he lost to Soonwoo Kwon in his first match at the tournament. Days later, he took part in Delray Beach Open and defeated Denis Istomin, Cedrik-Marcel Stebe, Steve Johnson before losing his semi-final match to Reilly Opelka. Raonic found form at the 2020 Cincinnati Masters, where he defeated Sam Querrey, Daniel Evans, and a resurgent Andy Murray, all in straight sets. In the quarterfinal stage, he recovered from a set and a break down, and saved a match point to defeat Filip Krajinović in their quarterfinal encounter. He defeated 4th seed Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets to reach his fourth Masters 1000 final. He lost to Novak Djokovic in 3 sets in the final. At the US Open, he lost in the second round to countryman, Vasek Pospisil. After a semifinal appearance at the St. Petersburg Open, Raonic would end his year with another semifinal appearance at the Paris Masters where he lost to 3rd seed and eventual champion Daniil Medvedev in straight sets. ### 2021: ATP Cup debut, injuries and hiatus Raonic opened his 2021 campaign at the 2021 ATP Cup representing team Canada alongside countrymen Denis Shapovalov, Steven Diez and Peter Polansky. Canada was drawn into a round robin group with teams Serbia and Germany, and Raonic was penciled in as the number 2 player. In the first tie against team Serbia, Raonic won his singles match in straight sets over Dušan Lajović. Partnering with Shapovalov in the deciding doubles match, they were unable to get the win and thus lost the tie 2–1. In the second tie, versus team Germany, Raonic lost his singles match against Jan-Lennard Struff in two tiebreaker sets, and after Shapovalov lost his match against Zverev, Canada was officially eliminated from the tournament. At the 2021 Australian Open, he lost in the fourth round to eventual champion Novak Djokovic. Raonic struggled with calf and right leg injuries for most of the year. After losing in the fourth round at the 2021 Miami Masters to eventual champion Hubert Hurkacz in three sets, he took a hiatus that lasted for three months and returned at the 2021 Atlanta Open in July. As the top seed, he lost in his opening match against eventual finalist Brandon Nakashima in three sets. After the loss, he took another hiatus due to his injuries. ### 2023: Comeback for grass season after two years According to his coach Mario Tudor, Raonic planned on returning to the tour in 2023. In May, news came that he would participate in the grass court season. In June, he entered the 2023 Libéma Open using his protected ranking and won his first match back, defeating fifth seed Miomir Kecmanović in straight sets. He won his first Major match since 2021 at the 2023 Wimbledon Championships defeating Dennis Novak. He lost to Tommy Paul in the second round. As a result, he moved more than 300 positions up, close to the top 500 in the rankings. He stated that this might be his last Wimbledon. He further added he expected to play the Canadian Open in Toronto and then the US Open before retiring. In Canada, he reached the third round, losing to Mackenzie McDonald. In November 2023, Raonic competed for Canada at the Davis Cup for the first time since 2018. He beat Patrick Kaukovalta in straight sets, but Canada ultimately lost to Finland who progressed to the semifinals of the tournament. ### 2024: Return to Australian Open and top 160 In January 2024, Raonic returned to the Australian Open using protected ranking, where his first round match was against home favourite Alex de Minaur. Raonic took the first set and de Minaur took the second. In the third set de Minaur had secured a break when Raonic retired from the game with a leg injury. In February 2024, Raonic was scheduled to play for Canada again at the Davis Cup qualifiers versus South Korea but did not participate. He returned to the top 200 at world No. 197 on 18 March 2024. In the beginning of the grass court season, again using protected ranking, he reached his second quarterfinal of the season at the 2024 Libéma Open in 's-Hertogenbosch (after Rotterdam) defeating eight seed Jordan Thompson and Roberto Bautista Agut. Next he entered the 2024 Queen's Club Championships and defeated local favorite Cameron Norrie in three tight sets, hitting 47 aces, a new record for a best-of-three match (surpassing Karlovic in 2015 with 45). As a result he moved into the top 160 in the ATP live rankings. ## National representation Early in his career, Raonic was questioned about whether he would follow the example of Rusedski, the last prominent Canadian tennis player, who decided to represent Great Britain instead. Raonic declared that he would play for Canada. Raonic embraced his role as Canada's top singles player, intent on growing the game in Canada. He stated in 2010: "I want to make a difference in Canada with [my career]. I feel if I were to achieve my goals it could make a great difference to the growth of tennis in Canada and help to produce more top players in the future." Before a Davis Cup tie with Japan in 2015, he said: "I'm here because I want to be here. I don't have anybody telling me I need to be here. I want to succeed at this event, and I want to succeed representing Canada." ### Davis Cup From 2010 to 2016, Canada competed in 16 Davis Cup ties. Raonic represented Canada in 11 of those ties, missing five due to injury: Ecuador in 2011, Japan in 2014, Belgium in 2015, and France and Chile in 2016. Overall, Raonic has 16 match wins in 22 Davis Cup matches (14–5 in singles; 2–1 in doubles). He is one of the most successful players in Canadian Davis Cup history, tied for sixth in match wins overall and for third in singles match wins. Raonic made his Davis Cup debut in Bogotá against Colombia in 2010 at the age of 19. Raonic lost both of his singles matches (against Santiago Giraldo and Juan Sebastián Cabal), but won his doubles match partnered with Nestor, who was then the top ranked doubles player in the world. His first singles match victory came in Canada's next tie against the Dominican Republic, when he beat Víctor Estrella Burgos in five sets. This marked the first five set match of Raonic's career. Competing against Mexico in 2011, Raonic won three rubbers in a tie for the first time, beating both Manuel Sánchez and Daniel Garza in singles and partnering with Pospisil to win in doubles as well. In the 2013 Davis Cup World Group first round, Raonic won singles rubbers over Ramos Viñolas and Guillermo García López to lead Canada over top-seeded Spain. He repeated this feat with victories over Fabio Fognini and Seppi to help Canada defeat Italy in the quarterfinals, sending Canada into the Davis Cup semifinals for the first time since 1913. In the semifinal against Serbia, Raonic won his singles match over Tipsarević, but lost to No. 1 Djokovic as Canada was eliminated. The defeat marked Raonic's first singles match against Djokovic. ### Olympics Raonic represented Canada at the London 2012 Olympics and competed in the singles competition as an unseeded player. He won his first-round match over Japan's Tatsuma Ito in straight sets. In the second round, Raonic lost to French player Tsonga 3–6, 6–3, 23–25, breaking three Olympic tennis records. The match holds the records for the most games played in a best-of-three sets match (66 games) and the most games played in a single set (48 games) in Olympic history. At the time, it was the longest Olympic match by time played (3 hours 57 minutes), but this record was broken three days later in the semifinal match between Federer and del Potro (4 hours 26 minutes). Raonic decided not to play in the 2016 Summer Olympics, citing health concerns and the Zika virus. ### Hopman Cup In 2014, Raonic partnered with Bouchard to represent Canada in the Hopman Cup. Raonic won two of three singles matches, and paired with Bouchard to win two of three doubles matches. Canada finished in second place in their pool—behind top-seeded Poland—and were eliminated. ## Playing style The most distinctive part of Raonic's game is his powerful and accurate serve, from which his "Missile" nickname is derived. He is frequently cited as having one of the best serves among his contemporaries, along with Karlović and Isner. Some consider Raonic's serve to be among the best of all time. Sampras, Raonic's childhood idol, describes the Canadian's serve as "bigger than big." After a match against Raonic, Djokovic commented "I can't recall the last time I was feeling so helpless returning. Even his second serve." Women's tennis player Serena Williams has said that "If she could take one thing from another player, it would be Milos Raonic's serve." Statistically, Raonic is among the strongest servers in the Open Era, winning 91% of service games to rank third all-time. Raonic has one of the fastest recorded serves of all time. Aided by his serve, Raonic employs an all-court style with an emphasis on short points. His groundstrokes are both good, but his forehand is stronger than his backhand. Because of this, he has been known to run around his backhand and hit inside-out forehands instead. He attempts to dictate play and is generally more aggressive than his opponent, as evidenced by usually having more winners and more unforced errors. To finish points quickly, Raonic occasionally approaches the net, with either a serve and volley or chip and charge strategy. Raonic prefers playing on hard courts, where he has been more successful than on clay or grass courts. All but two of the tournaments where Raonic has reached the final have been played on hard courts, and all but three of his victories over top 10 players have been on hard courts as well. When he was twenty, the National Post described Raonic as a "hothead whose on-court demeanour was holding him back." As he grew older, commentators came to see him as "stoic", "robotic", and "emotionless", with The Daily Telegraph referring to him as "an analytical character who questions everything he does in practice". In 2014, Raonic explained: "I'm the son of two engineers, so everything is a numbers and calculation game." In 2016, he added: "I am very systematic in how [I] need to go about things to bring out the best tennis for myself, and maybe that comes off as mechanical and robotic and those kind of things, but I don't know if I'd ever change that because I feel that's the way I get the best out of myself when it comes to my tennis." Aspects of Raonic's game which have been criticized include his return of serve, quickness and mobility, backhand, short game, and the use of backspin or sidespin. His above-average height—196 cm (6 ft 5 in)—is linked to his strong serve, but is said to limit his movement around the court. ## Equipment and apparel Raonic endorses the Wilson BLX Blade 98 18x20 tennis racket, and uses LUXILON M2 Pro 1.25 16L strings. In January 2013, Raonic became the first tennis player to endorse New Balance clothing and shoes, in a deal reported to be worth "US$1 million annually over a five-year term." Roughly two and a half years later, this deal was extended "for the length of [Raonic's] career and beyond," and stipulates that New Balance will increase its support of the Milos Raonic Foundation. The lifelong nature of this contract was described by Tennis Canada as "unique." Since March 2014, Raonic has donned a sleeve on his right arm while playing. At first, he wore a fisherman's sleeve to cover a rash he had due to an allergic reaction to massage cream. This was replaced with an athletic compression sleeve, often colour-coordinated with his on-court apparel. The sleeve is worn for comfort, and wearing it became a habit for Raonic. The sleeve has become a distinctive part of Raonic's image, and has spawned a Twitter account. The motto "Believe in the Sleeve" has become synonymous with Raonic in the media and among Raonic's fans. Serena Williams described the sleeve as "super cool and different." Raonic is represented by CAA Sports, a division of Creative Artists Agency. His other sponsorship deals include Aviva (insurance), Canada Goose (apparel), Commerce Court (real estate), Lacoste (apparel), Rolex (watches), SAP (software), and Zepp (sports metrics). ## Rivals and contemporaries ### Raonic and the Big Four Raonic holds a combined 9–36 record against the Big Four, including 0–11 against Djokovic, 2–7 against Nadal, 3–11 against Federer, and 4–9 against Murray. Each of Raonic's deepest runs in significant tournaments (i.e. majors and ATP 1000 tournaments) has ended with a loss to a member of the Big Four: Nadal in the 2013 Canadian Open final, Federer in the 2014 Wimbledon semifinal, Djokovic in the 2014 Paris Masters final, Murray in the 2016 Australian Open semifinal, Djokovic in the 2016 Indian Wells Masters final, Murray in the 2016 Wimbledon final, and Murray in the semifinals of the 2016 ATP World Tour Finals. At majors, Raonic has a 1–8 record against the Big Four, losing the first five matches in straight sets. He has met only one of the four in Davis Cup play: he lost to Djokovic in the 2013 semifinals. Raonic's most frequent opponent, either inside or outside the Big Four, is Federer (14 matches). His first victory over Federer in the 2014 Paris Masters quarterfinal was hailed as "a career-defining win." His second victory over Federer—at the 2016 Brisbane International—was his first in a final against the Big Four. A third victory over Federer—in the 2016 Wimbledon semifinal—marked Raonic's first victory at a Grand Slam tournament against the Big Four. Raonic referred to his match against Murray at the 2016 ATP World Tour Finals as "the best match [he's] ever competed in." ### Raonic and Nishikori Kei Nishikori is often cited as Raonic's primary rival. The two have very different strengths; according to The Globe and Mail, Raonic uses his "size and his serve", while Nishikori uses his "savvy and speed." Both are the first from their respective countries to achieve a top 10 ranking, and both have a career-high ranking inside the top 4. In May 2015, they were the two youngest players in the top 10. Nishikori holds a 5–2 advantage in seven close matches, including two wins in the Japan Open final (2012, 2014). Of the twenty-five sets they have played, ten have required a tiebreak. Only one of their matches has been a straight sets victory. Five matches have required the maximum number of sets. One of these was a marathon US Open five-set match that equalled the record for latest finish ever at 2:26 a.m. Nishikori and Raonic are among a group of players whom tennis pundits suggest could be the successors of the Big Four. The members of this group vary, but have included Grigor Dimitrov, Ernests Gulbis, Marin Čilić, and Dominic Thiem. Raonic holds a positive record against Gulbis and Thiem, having won on all six combined occasions, but has a negative record against Čilić and Dimitrov, having lost four matches to the latter in six meetings, including one walkover. ### Raonic and Pospisil Pospisil is more of a contemporary rather than a rival of Raonic. Owing to their similarity in age—Pospisil is six months older—and the fact that both are successful products of Tennis Canada's development programs, they have been linked as the leaders of a new generation of Canadian tennis players. They partnered in doubles frequently early in their careers, winning doubles titles together in junior and ATP Challenger events. Between 2011 and 2015, Raonic and Pospisil have been the two top-ranked Canadian men in year-end rankings. As well as four ATP Challenger and Futures matches, they have played each other in two ATP World Tour matches: Raonic beat Pospisil in the first all-Canadian semifinal at an ATP 1000 tournament, and in the first all-Canadian final in ATP history. They are frequent Davis Cup teammates, and they planned to play doubles together at the 2016 Rio Olympics until Raonic withdrew. ### Raonic, Isner, and Karlović Raonic is often compared to Isner and Karlović. The trio possess statistically dominant serves, leading the ATP in service games won and in aces per match in the period between 2012 and 2018. They have played each other infrequently, however. Raonic is 1–1 against Karlović and 1–5 against Isner. Karlović holds a 3–2 head-to-head advantage over Isner. ## Philanthropy In 2011, while recovering from a hip injury sustained at Wimbledon, Raonic decided to become involved with philanthropic work, focusing on helping disadvantaged children. The following year, in 2012, he launched the Milos Raonic Foundation, which aims to "support children from disadvantaged backgrounds in order to remove economic, physical and other barriers that might prevent them from becoming healthy, productive members of society. ... In the initial stages of its work, the foundation will focus, in particular, on children with physical disabilities." As of 2016, the foundation had awarded $120,000 in grants to the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, and $30,000 to the Canadian Paralympic Committee. Raonic and his parents are the three directors of the foundation, which has partnered with ATP Aces for Charity. Several celebrity fundraising events have been held in conjunction with the foundation. On November 15, 2012, the inaugural "Raonic Race for Kids" was held, with multiple teams competing in quick physical and intellectual challenges. Teams were led by celebrities, including Canadian Football Hall of Fame quarterback Damon Allen and tennis players Eugenie Bouchard and Daniel Nestor. The next night, a second "Face Off" event featured exhibition matches between Raonic and Andy Roddick, and between Serena Williams and Agnieszka Radwańska. In November 2013, the second "Raonic Race for Kids" featured Davis Cup captain Martin Laurendeau, musician Jim Cuddy, and broadcaster George Stroumboulopoulos. The third "Raonic Race for Kids" in November 2014 featured Tennis Canada CEO Kelly Murumets, soccer player Dwayne De Rosario, and figure-skating champions Patrick Chan, Tessa Virtue, and Scott Moir. In December 2020 it was announced that Raonic joined the High Impact Athletes, an organization based on the effective altruism movement where professional athletes pledge to donate at least 1% of its income to the most effective, evidence based charities in the world. ## Career statistics ### Grand Slam tournament performance timeline Current through the 2024 US Open. Note: Milos Raonic has not played doubles at any Grand Slam tournament. ### Grand Slam finals: 1 (1 runner-up) ### Records - These records were attained in the Open Era of tennis (post-1968). ## Awards - 2011 – ATP Newcomer of the Year - 2011 – Tennis Canada male player of the year - 2012 – QMI Agency Canadian Male Athlete of the Year - 2012 – Tennis Canada male player of the year - 2013 – Tennis Canada male player of the year - 2013 – Lionel Conacher Award - 2014 – Emirates ATP Top 10 Trophy - 2014 – Tennis Canada male player of the year - 2014 – Lionel Conacher Award - 2014 – Canadian Club of Toronto's Canadian of the Year - 2015 – Tennis Canada male player of the year - 2016 – Toronto Sports Hall of Honour male athlete of the year - 2016 – Tennis Canada male player of the year ## See also - List of Canadian sports personalities

Phoolan Devi

Indian bandit and politician (1963–2001)

Phoolan Devi (, 10 August 1963 – 25 July 2001), popularly known as the Bandit Queen, was an Indian dacoit (bandit) who became a politician, serving as a member of parliament until her assassination. She was a woman of the Mallah subcaste who grew up in poverty in a village in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where her family was on the losing side of a land dispute which caused them many problems. After being married off at the age of eleven and being sexually abused by various people, she joined a gang of dacoits. Her gang robbed higher-caste villages and held up trains and vehicles. When she punished her rapists and evaded capture by the authorities, she became a heroine to the Other Backward Classes who saw her as a Robin Hood figure. Phoolan Devi was charged in absentia for the 1981 Behmai massacre, in which twenty Thakur men were killed, allegedly on her command. After this event, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh resigned, and calls to apprehend her were amplified. She surrendered two years later in a carefully negotiated settlement and spent eleven years in Gwalior prison, awaiting trial. Phoolan Devi was released in 1994 after her charges were set aside. She subsequently became a politician and was elected as a member of parliament for the Samajwadi Party in 1996. She lost her seat in 1998, but regained it the following year. She was the incumbent at the time of her death in 2001. She was assassinated outside her house by Sher Singh Rana, who was convicted for the murder in 2014. At the time of her death, she was still fighting against the reinstituted criminal charges, having lost a 1996 appeal to the Supreme Court to have the charges dropped. Phoolan Devi's worldwide fame grew after the release of the controversial 1994 film Bandit Queen, which told her life story in a way she did not approve of. Her life has also inspired several biographies and her dictated autobiography was entitled I, Phoolan Devi. There are varying accounts of her life because she told differing versions to suit her changing circumstances. ## Early life Phoolan Devi was born on 10 August 1963, in the village of Gorha Ka Purwa in Jalaun district, Uttar Pradesh, India. The land is crossed by the Yamuna and Chambal rivers and is filled with gorges and ravines, making it suitable terrain for dacoits (bandits). Her family was poor and from the Mallah subcaste, which lies towards the bottom of the Hindu caste system in India, with Mallahs being Shudras who traditionally work as fishermen. Phoolan Devi and her sisters made dung cakes to burn as fuel, as is common practice in the region; her family grew chickpeas, sunflowers and pearl millet. Phoolan Devi's mother was called Moola and her father Devidin; she had four sisters and one brother. Devidin had one brother, Biharilal, who had a son called Maiyadin. Biharilal and Maiyadin stole land from Phoolan Devi's father by bribing the village leader to change the land records. Her family was compelled to live in a small house on the edge of the village; the uncle and his son continued to harass the family and steal their crops, aiming to drive them away from the village. At the age of 10, Phoolan Devi decided to protest against the injustice. With her older sister Rukhmini, she sat in the disputed land and ate the chickpeas growing there, saying the crop belonged to her family. Maiyadin ordered her to leave and when she did not, he beat her into unconsciousness; the village leader then decreed that her parents should also be beaten. In 2018, Phoolan Devi's mother told The Asian Age that she was still fighting to regain the land which Maiyadin had stolen from the family. Following these events, Phoolan Devi's parents decided to arrange a marriage for her. She was married to a man called Puttilal, who offered 100 Indian rupees (equivalent to ₹400 or £4.20 in 2023), a cow and a bicycle to her parents. According to the version related by her to her biographer Mala Sen, it was agreed that Phoolan Devi would start living with him after three years, but Puttilal came back within three months and took her away. He was three times her age; she refused his sexual advances and fell sick. When her parents came and collected her, they took her to a doctor who diagnosed measles. For a wife to leave her husband was scandalous; preying on Phoolan Devi's parents' fears of disgrace, Maiyadin offered to ensure that Puttilal took her back if they signed a document. The family was illiterate and the parents were warned that it contained a clause giving Maiyadin legal rights to their land, so they refused to sign. Phoolan Devi was sent to stay with a distant relative in the village of Teoga, where she met her recently married cousin Kailash, who ran errands for dacoits (also known locally as bahghis). They became close and had an affair, which resulted in Phoolan Devi being ordered by Kailash's wife to go back to her own village. Once Phoolan Devi was back in Gorha Ka Purwa, the second son of the village leader became infatuated with her and when she did not reciprocate his affections, he attacked her. Again, Phoolan Devi needed to leave the village and Maiyadin pressured the family to ask Puttilal to take her back, which he did. In the meantime, Puttilal had taken another wife who often mistreated Phoolan Devi. After several years, Puttilal abandoned Phoolan Devi beside the Yamuna River and she again returned to the parental home. In January 1979, Maiyadin destroyed the family's crops and began to chop down a neem tree on their land. When Phoolan Devi threw stones at him and wounded his face, she was arrested by the local police and detained for one month. She later told The Atlantic that she was arrested because Maiyadin accused her of robbing him. Mala Sen asked her if she had been raped at the police station and Phoolan Devi replied: "They had plenty of fun at my expense and beat the hell out of me too." Sen notes that it is common for victims of sexual assault to avoid or repress talking about what happened to them. Sen also observes that from the mid-1970s onwards, Indian feminist groups recorded many instances of women being attacked and murdered by men. The director of the Women's Feature Service commented regarding the case of Phoolan Devi that "quite often rape is used as a method of control and punishment to keep women in their place". ## Banditry ### Bandit Queen In July 1979, a gang of bandits led by Babu Gujjar kidnapped Phoolan Devi from her family's home, for reasons she explained in multiple ways. Gujjar took her as his property and raped her repeatedly. Vikram Mallah, the second in command, became fond of Phoolan Devi and objected to her mistreatment, so he killed Gujjar and became leader of the gang. He trained Phoolan Devi to use a rifle and the two fell in love. Over the following year, the group robbed vehicles and looted higher caste villages, sometimes disguising themselves using stolen police uniforms. The gang lived in the ravines, constantly moving between places such as Devariya, Kanpur and Orai. They located Puttilal and punished him violently. As news of Phoolan Devi's exploits spread, she became popular with the lower castes, who called her Dasyu Sundari (Beautiful Bandit) and celebrated her as a Robin Hood figure, who robbed from the rich to give to the poor. She was seen as an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga and a doll was produced of her in police uniform wearing a bandoleer. A former leader of the gang, Sri Ram Singh, was released from prison together with his brother Lalla Ram Singh in 1980; they were Thakur men (Thakurs being a subcaste of the Kshatriya caste) and thus a higher caste than the other members. After they rejoined the bandits, a power struggle ensued and Sri Ram murdered Vikram Mallah. Without the latter's protection, Phoolan Devi was a prisoner of Sri Ram; he took her to the remote village of Behmai where she was repeatedly raped by other Thakurs. In a final indignity, she was forced to collect water for him from the well whilst naked, in front of the villagers. ### Behmai massacre Phoolan Devi managed to escape and met Man Singh, a bandit with whom she formed a new gang. They became lovers, living on wild berries and produce stolen from cultivated fields. She returned to Behmai with her gang on 14 February 1981; speaking through a loudhailer, she demanded that the villagers hand over Sri Ram Singh and his brother, then the bandits went from house to house looting valuables. When the two men could not be found, twenty-two men were lined up at the Yamuna River and shot from behind; twenty died and two survived. Since all the dead were at the time thought to be Thakur, Thakur farmers pressured Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to impose the rule of law. When Phoolan Devi was arrested in 1983, she claimed that she had not been present at the time of the shooting. This was corroborated by the evidence of the two men who survived, who stated that they had not seen her and that a man called Ram Avtar was giving orders. By other accounts, such as that of journalist Khushwant Singh, it was Phoolan Devi who put the men to death. She was celebrated among Dalits (people at the bottom of the caste system) for fighting back against her abuse by men of a higher caste and when she eluded capture by the authorities her fame grew. The killings prompted the resignation of V. P. Singh, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. It was later clarified that the dead men were seventeen Thakurs, one Muslim, one Dalit and one member of Other Backward Classes. Phoolan Devi was charged in absentia with 48 crimes, which included kidnapping, looting and murder. ### Surrender After the massacre, Phoolan Devi remained on the run and was nearly caught by the police on 31 March 1981. Her mother was held for five months in Kalpi prison to pressure Phoolan Devi to give herself up. In 1983, Phoolan Devi surrendered to the authorities after long negotiations led by Rajendra Chaturvedi, a police officer from Bhind who gained the trust of local dacoits after arresting Malkhan Singh Rajpoot. Dressed in a police uniform and wearing a red bandanna on her head, she bowed before representations of the goddess Durga and Mahatma Gandhi, then prostrated herself in front of Arjun Singh, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, with approximately 8,000 people watching. Phoolan Devi had set conditions regarding her surrender, which included: no death penalty for anyone from her gang; a maximum custodial sentence of eight years; no use of handcuffs; being imprisoned as a group; being imprisoned in Madhya Pradesh and not Uttar Pradesh; her family being given land with space for her goat and cow; and her brother getting a government job. She and seven men, including Man Singh, surrendered. Mala Sen records that the male journalists gathered in Bhind to watch her surrender were unimpressed with her plain appearance. Phoolan Devi faced the 48 criminal charges and the gang was incarcerated at Gwalior, in Madhya Pradesh. Despite the prior agreement that she would not spend more than eight years in prison, she spent over ten years on remand. During this time, she had tuberculosis and was diagnosed with two stomach tumours. Whilst receiving hospital treatment, she received a hysterectomy without her consent. The others, including Man Singh, agreed to trials in Uttar Pradesh and were all acquitted, but Phoolan Devi refused to make a deal and remained convinced she would be murdered if she went there. ## Political career Charges against Phoolan Devi were dropped in 1994 by order of Mulayam Singh Yadav, the leader of the Samajwadi Party and Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. After her release from prison, she joined the Samajwadi Party and in the 1996 general election took a seat in the Indian lower legislative body, the Lok Sabha, as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh. She won with a margin of 37,000 and had more than 300,000 votes in total. She was not the only illiterate MP, joining others such as Bhagwati Devi and Shobhawati Devi. Phoolan Devi campaigned with limited success for the rights of women and to provide better amenities for the poor. She told author Roy Moxham "I want to bring hospitals, schools, electricity and clean water to the poor in the villages. To stop child marriage and to improve life for women." Mallah people were happy to have someone of their caste representing them in parliament for the first time and she was generally popular among Other Backward Classes. The Kanpur District Court set aside Yadav's pronouncement, which reinstated the charges against her in connection with the Behmai massacre. This decision was upheld by the Allahabad High Court. In 1996, Phoolan Devi lost a Supreme Court appeal to have the charges against her dropped. The following year, the court approved a request from Uttar Pradesh to arraign her on charges related to the Behmai massacre and she did not attend the court hearing in Kanpur. After several months of legal machinations, the Supreme Court ruled that Phoolan Devi did not need to be jailed before trial. She lost her seat to Virendra Singh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate in the 1998 elections, then regained it the following year. Phoolan Devi married Umed Singh in 1994; they appeared together in a film, called Sholay Aur Chingari (Blazing Fires and Sparks). Together with her new husband, she became a Buddhist, aiming to evade the Hindu caste system. According to Moxham, she later renounced Buddhism. ## Bandit Queen film The 1994 film Bandit Queen was loosely based on Mala Sen's biography; it was directed by Shekhar Kapur and starred Seema Biswas as Phoolan Devi. After it received acclaim at Cannes Film Festival, Kapur asked for permission from the Central Board of Film Certification to screen the film at cinemas in India. Phoolan Devi attempted to block the release, commenting "It's simply not the story of my life". She was supported by the feminist and novelist Arundhati Roy, who wrote a critique of the film (entitled "The great Indian rape trick"), arguing that whilst Sen's book presented a complex story with different perspectives, Kapur portrayed Phoolan Devi as a victim without having met her. In his 2021 autobiography Farrukh Dhondy, the former commissioning editor at Channel 4, described how he rushed to Delhi in order to enlist Umed Singh's aid in persuading Phoolan Devi to drop her complaint. When Phoolan Devi discovered this, the couple became estranged, before later reconciling. A court case was brought against screening the film by lawyer Indira Singh and Arundhati Roy at the Delhi High Court. Ultimately, Phoolan Devi received £40,000 from Channel 4 and dropped the complaint. Later in 1994, she dictated her autobiography I, Phoolan Devi which was published first in French in 1996 and then in other languages, including English, Japanese and Malay. The income from book sales supported Phoolan Devi and enabled her to pay her legal fees. ## Assassination At 13:30 (IST) on 25 July 2001, Phoolan Devi was shot dead by three unknown assailants outside her house at 44 Ashoka Road in New Delhi. She was shot nine times and her bodyguard was hit twice; he returned fire as the attackers escaped by car. She was rushed to Lohia Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival. She was aged 37 when she died and serving as an MP. All business of both houses of Parliament was adjourned for two days and the funeral took place in Mirzapur. Umed Singh commented "No one likes it when someone, especially a woman, from the lower classes rises and makes a name for herself" and her lawyer Kamini Jaiswal stated "This murder is the result of caste conflict." The criminal case against her was still open at the time of her death. Days after the murder, Sher Singh Rana surrendered to police in Dehra Dun and claimed he had assassinated Phoolan Devi in revenge for the Behmai massacre; he at first struggled to convince police that he was present at the scene of the crime. He escaped from Tihar Jail in 2004 and was recaptured two years later. In August 2014, Rana received a life sentence for murder, with ten co-defendants being acquitted. Two years later, he appealed his sentence to the Delhi High Court and was set free by Justice Gita Mittal on a personal bond of ₹50,000 (equivalent to ₹72,000 or £750 in 2023) and two sureties, each of the same amount. He was required to not interact with Phoolan Devi's family and to report to the police every six months, whilst also informing them where he stayed and what mobile telephone number he was using. In August 2001, Umed Singh announced prior to Phoolan Devi's terahvin that he was setting up a trust to administer the properties she owned; he was immediately denounced by her sisters and mother, who claimed he was trying to steal her investments worth ₹25 million (equivalent to ₹100 million or £1 million in 2023). Munni Devi alleged that Umed Singh knew the murderers and challenged his alibi. She said that Umed Singh was abusive towards Phoolan Devi and that her sister had tried at least twice to divorce him. Phoolan Devi's first husband Puttilal also made a demand for her properties since they had never officially divorced. ## Legacy Phoolan Devi's fame throughout India continued to grow after her death and the controversy surrounding the Bandit Queen film had already ensured that she was globally famous. She has become a legendary figure, alongside other outlaws such as Ned Kelly, Sándor Rózsa and Pancho Villa. Her life has inspired biographies by Roy Moxham, Mala Sen and Richard Shears and Isobelle Gidley, as well as novels by Irène Frain and Dimitri Friedman. A graphic novel entitled Phoolan Devi, Rebel Queen by Claire Fauvel [fr] was published in 2020. The scholar Tatiana Szurlej notes that the facts presented in these biographies often contradict each other despite coming from interviews with Phoolan Devi herself and questions whether she forgot elements or adapted her account to suit her changing circumstances. In 1994, Arundhati Roy commented that Phoolan Devi "is suffering from a case of Legenditis. She's only a version of herself. There are other versions of her that are jostling for attention." Media theorist Sandra Ponzanesi states Phoolan Devi is an example of a Third World postcolonial subject who is aware of the racist and patronising Orientalist attitudes that First World analysts have of her. Several films have been made about her life. Ashok Roy made the 1984 film Phoolan Devi in Bengali and followed it the next year with a Hindi version entitled Kahani Phoolvati Ki (The story of Phoolan). Bandit Queen came out in 1994 and in 2019 Hossein Martin Fazeli was developing a documentary entitled Phoolan. In 2022, Farrukh Dhondy announced that he was making a web series about her life told from the perspective of Rajendra Chaturvedi, the person who arranged her surrender. Phoolan Devi has been represented in fine art by painters such as Rekha Rodwittiya. Her life has also been commemorated by folk singers, making her into a mythical outlaw figure. Shirish Korde and Lynn Kremer wrote an opera called Phoolan Devi: The Bandit Queen which premiered in 2010 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, US. The verdict in the court case concerning the Behmai massacre was delayed in 2020 because important case documents had been lost. The last witness died the following year and since the presiding judge had been transferred, the case began again in 2022. In 2023, another suspect died, leaving only two people on trial. The Mallah subcaste forms part of the Nishad caste and two Nishad political parties laid claim to Phoolan Devi's legacy. In 2018, the NISHAD Party reported it would build a statue of her in Gorakhpur. Three years later, in order to mark twenty years since her assassination, the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) announced it would place 18 feet (5.5 m) high statues of her in 18 districts of Uttar Pradesh and were prevented from doing so by the police. Mukesh Sahani, the leader of the VIP, was prevented from leaving Varanasi airport by the Government of Uttar Pradesh when he wanted to install a statue. He reacted by setting up a foundation in Phoolan Devi's name and promising to deliver up to 50,000 small idols of Phoolan Devi, to any local person who requested one. Also in 2021, tributes marking the anniversary of her death were made by Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and Tejashwi Yadav of Rashtriya Janata Dal. ## Selected works - ## See also - Jagga Jatt - Paan Singh Tomar - Seema Parihar - Ashok Mahto gang - List of assassinated Indian politicians - Michelina Di Cesare

Science Fantasy (magazine)

British science fiction magazine (1950–1964)

Science Fantasy, which also appeared under the titles Impulse and SF Impulse, was a British fantasy and science fiction magazine, launched in 1950 by Nova Publications as a companion to Nova's New Worlds. Walter Gillings was editor for the first two issues, and was then replaced by John Carnell, the editor of New Worlds, as a cost-saving measure. Carnell edited both magazines until Nova went out of business in early 1964. The titles were acquired by Roberts & Vinter, who hired Kyril Bonfiglioli to edit Science Fantasy; Bonfiglioli changed the title to Impulse in early 1966, but the new title led to confusion with the distributors and sales fell, though the magazine remained profitable. The title was changed again to SF Impulse for the last few issues. Science Fantasy ceased publication the following year, when Roberts & Vinter came under financial pressure after their printer went bankrupt. Gillings had an inventory of material that he had acquired while editing Fantasy, and he drew on this for Science Fantasy, as well as incorporating his own fanzine, Science Fantasy Review, into the new magazine. Once Carnell took over, Science Fantasy typically ran a long lead novelette along with several shorter stories; prominent contributors in the 1950s included John Brunner, Ken Bulmer, and Brian Aldiss, whose first novel Nonstop appeared (in an early version) in the February 1956 issue. Fantasy stories began to appear more frequently during the latter half of the 1950s, and in the early 1960s Carnell began to publish Thomas Burnett Swann's well-received historical fantasies. Carnell felt that the literary quality of Science Fantasy was always higher than that of New Worlds, and in the early 1960s his efforts were rewarded with three consecutive Hugo nominations for best magazine. Under Bonfiglioli more new writers appeared, including Keith Roberts, Brian Stableford and Josephine Saxton. In the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley, the final year of Impulse, as it was titled by that time, included some of the best material ever published in a British science fiction magazine. ## Publication history ### Gillings and Carnell In early 1946, John Carnell launched a new science fiction magazine titled New Worlds, published by Pendulum Publications. The first issue appeared in July 1946 and failed to sell well. The second issue, that October, sold better, but Pendulum went out of business before the end of 1947 with only one more issue released. A group of sf fans, including Carnell and Frank Cooper, decided to restart the magazine under their own control, and formed Nova Publications Ltd. The fourth issue appeared in April 1949. At the same time that the first issue of New Worlds appeared, a separate British magazine called Fantasy was launched by Walter Gillings, a science fiction fan and a reporter by profession. Fantasy lasted for only three issues before closing in 1947, but Gillings had accumulated a substantial inventory of stories—enough to fill nine issues. Gillings followed the demise of Fantasy by publishing a fanzine, titled Fantasy Review, beginning in March 1947. In 1950, with New Worlds on a stable quarterly schedule, Nova Publications decided to launch a companion, Science Fantasy. They chose Gillings as the editor, and his fanzine, which had been retitled Science Fantasy Review in 1949, was incorporated in the new magazine as a department. The first issue was dated Summer 1950, but printing disputes meant that the second issue was delayed until winter. Paper rationing delayed the third issue to Winter 1951, but before it appeared, Nova decided that it could no longer afford to have separate editors for New Worlds and Science Fantasy, and Gillings was let go. According to Carnell, there were also "fundamental differences of opinion" that led to the decision to replace him. After the Spring 1953 issue, Nova Publications decided to switch printers, in order to cut costs and bring the cover price down from 2/- (10 p) to 1/6 (7.5 p). The new printers, The Carlton Press, failed to keep to the agreed printing schedule, and produced poor quality work; there were also printers' strikes, and this disruption caused extended delays in the appearance of the seventh issue. While the dispute with the printers was going on, Carnell and Maurice Goldsmith, a journalist acquaintance of Carnell's, put together a small conference of well-known science fiction authors, including Arthur C. Clarke and John Wyndham. Goldsmith covered the conference for Illustrated, a weekly magazine, and the article caught the attention of Maclaren & Sons Ltd, a technical trade publisher interested in launching a new sf magazine. Carnell turned down the offer because of his loyalty to Nova Publications, but subsequent discussions ultimately led to Maclaren taking control of Nova Publications, with a commitment to produce New Worlds on a monthly basis and Science Fantasy on a bimonthly schedule. Maclaren's legal department was helpful in resolving the dispute with The Carlton Press, and the seventh issue of Science Fantasy finally appeared with a cover date of March 1954. In 1958, Nova decided to launch a British reprint of the American magazine Science Fiction Adventures, under the same title. The British Science Fiction Adventures lasted until May 1963, when it was felled by declining sales. New Worlds, Nova's flagship title, and Science Fantasy were also suffering from poor sales, with circulation estimated at about 5,000, though a change from bimonthly to a monthly schedule was also considered that year for Science Fantasy. In September Nova decided to close down both remaining titles, and in preparation for the change Carnell signed a contract in December 1963 to edit an original anthology series, New Writings in SF, for publisher Dennis Dobson. Readers' responses to news of the planned demise of the magazines included a letter from Michael Moorcock, published in the April 1964 New Worlds, asking how the British market would now be able to train writers to sell to the higher-paying US magazines. ### Roberts & Vinter In early 1964, David Warburton of Roberts & Vinter, an established publisher, heard from the printer of Science Fantasy and New Worlds that the magazines were going to fold shortly. Warburton decided that having a respectable magazine would help him in getting good distribution for Roberts & Vinter's books: Science Fantasy and New Worlds both had distribution arrangements with the two main British newsagents of the time, John Menzies and W.H. Smith. Carnell did not want to continue to edit the magazines in addition to New Writings in SF, and recommended Moorcock to Warburton; Kyril Bonfiglioli, an Oxford art dealer who was a friend of Brian Aldiss, also expressed an interest. Warburton gave Moorcock the choice of which magazine to edit; Moorcock chose New Worlds, and Bonfiglioli became the new editor of Science Fantasy. Roberts & Vinter changed the format from digest to paperback, and the first issue under Bonfiglioli's control was number 65, dated June–July 1964. The schedule was initially somewhat irregular, with each issue dated with two months even when two issues were only a month apart—for example, June–July 1964 was followed by July–August 1964. From March 1965 a regular monthly schedule was begun. Bonfiglioli often bought material from writers without an established reputation; he did not make any special effort to acquire stories from well-known names. He was known for writing long and helpful rejection letters to newcomers, but he also had a reputation for laziness, and much of the day-to-day editorial work was done by assistants—first James Parkhill-Rathbone, and then Keith Roberts. Bonfiglioli disliked the title of the magazine, feeling that it "promised the worst of both worlds"; he proposed Caliban as the new title, but the publisher dissuaded him. He settled on Impulse instead, and the magazine appeared under the new title starting with the March 1966 issue. The paperback format was unchanged, but the volume numeration was restarted at volume 1 number 1, to "sever all connections with Science Fantasy", in the words of sf historian Mike Ashley. The name change proved to be disastrous; there was already a magazine called Impulse, and this caused distribution problems. In addition, treating Impulse as a new magazine meant a fresh distribution contract was needed. Bonfiglioli attempted to repair the damage by changing the name to SF Impulse starting in August 1966, but the result was a dramatic drop in circulation. By late 1966 Bonfiglioli had made enough money from his antiques dealing to be able to retire to Jersey. J. G. Ballard was briefly involved with the magazine in an editorial role, but his aims for the magazine were too far from the publisher's goals and he was quickly replaced by Harry Harrison. Harrison almost immediately had to leave England and handed over much of the day-to-day management of the magazine to Keith Roberts. Despite the setback from Bonfiglioli's title change, the magazine was still profitable, but in July 1966 Roberts & Vinter's distributor, Thorpe & Porter, went bankrupt while owing Roberts & Vinter a substantial sum. The resulting financial pressure led Roberts & Vinter to decide to focus on their more profitable magazines, and the February 1967 issue of SF Impulse was the last, though New Worlds, the sister magazine, survived via an Arts Council grant obtained by Brian Aldiss's efforts. The title was merged with New Worlds with effect from the March 1967 issue, but nothing of SF Impulse's content was retained. ## Contents and reception ### 1950s In the first issue, Gillings declared that he was interested in science fantasy "in all its forms: with its significant ideas, its surprising prophecies, its sheer fictions, its evolution as a fascinating literature". Stories in the first issue, drawn from Gillings' inventory of material acquired for Fantasy, included "The Belt", by J.M. Walsh; "Time's Arrow", by Arthur C. Clarke; and "Monster", by John Christopher, writing as Christopher Youd. Gillings also included several non-fiction features, such as his fanzine, Science Fantasy Review, incorporated into Science Fantasy as a department, and condensed to a few pages. In the first issue Gillings reviewed an article about science fiction by Jacob Bronowski which had appeared in the Continental Daily Mail. There were also three book review columns: two by Gillings, writing under pseudonyms, and one by John Aiken, the son of poet Conrad Aiken. When Carnell took over, he planned to distinguish Science Fantasy from its sister magazine, New Worlds, by adding more fantasy, while printing nothing but sf in New Worlds, though it took some time for the two magazines to develop separate personalities. Carnell dropped the non-fiction features and instead published a series of guest editorials, starting with Gillings in the third issue and H.J. Campbell in the fourth issue. The acquisition of Nova Publications by Maclaren gave Carnell access to the publishing facilities of a well-established company, and to established distribution channels, which freed him to focus on his editorial duties. Carnell tended to put longer stories in Science Fantasy than in New Worlds, and Science Fantasy typically ran a long lead novelette with several short stories. Stories that would not have suited New Worlds began to appear, such as William F. Temple's "Eternity" (February 1955), in which aliens mysteriously provide haloes to thousands of people, and Dal Stiven's "Free Will", which featured robot ghosts. Stories in the whimsical fantasy tradition that had been started by Unknown did not often appear in Science Fantasy. Many of the lead novelettes in the 1950s were provided by John Brunner and Ken Bulmer. Brunner's first appearance was in September 1955 with "The Talisman"; over the next few years he wrote both science fiction and fantasy for Science Fantasy, including "A Time to Read" (December 1956), an alternate-world fantasy, and "Lungfish" (December 1957), a generation starship story. Bulmer's first appearance in Science Fantasy was in June 1955, with "Psi No More"; he contributed regularly thereafter. A short version of Brian Aldiss's first novel, Nonstop, appeared in the February 1956 issue, and Aldiss subsequently contributed some experimental stories. From 1956 onwards the magazine contained substantially more fantasy than sf. In Carnell's opinion, the literary quality of Science Fantasy was "far higher" than that of New Worlds, but New Worlds was always the better-selling of the two magazines. Carnell's determination to keep the quality high led him to delay publishing issue 20 for two months because of a "lack of suitable material". His efforts were rewarded by frequent appearances of stories from Science Fantasy in the annual Year's Greatest SF anthology series edited by Judith Merril. Carnell occasionally used reprints, often selecting stories in line with the magazine's focus on offbeat fantasy, such as Fritz Leiber's "Space-Time for Springers", and Theodore Sturgeon's "The Graveyard Reader". Towards the end of the 1950s Carnell began to reintroduce non-fiction, and starting in 1959 he printed a series of articles by Sam Moskowitz on key figures in the early history of science fiction, such as Edgar Allan Poe; these articles, which had first appeared in American magazines such as Satellite Science Fiction, were later collected as Explorers of the Infinite. The artwork was of variable quality, in the opinion of critic Brian Stableford; among the better covers Stableford cites the work of Brian Lewis, who supplied almost all Science Fantasy's cover art from 1958 through 1961. Historian David Kyle commented on the "remarkable" cover by R.M. Bull for the third issue, which he regarded as "strikingly reminiscent of the work of Margaret Brundage for Weird Tales in the thirties." ### 1960s In the early 1960s, Thomas Burnett Swann became strongly associated with Science Fantasy. He had published a couple of genre short stories before beginning to sell to Carnell with "The Dryad-Tree" in the August 1960 issue. Swann's speciality was historical fantasy, and Where Is the Bird of Fire?, his retelling of the Romulus and Remus myth, which was serialised in Science Fantasy in 1962, "received more praise than any other [novelette] in recent years", according to Carnell. Swann was one of the three mainstays of Science Fantasy in the early 1960s: the others were Michael Moorcock and J.G. Ballard. Ballard's first story in Science Fantasy was "Prima Belladona", which appeared in the December 1956 issue; his work over the next few years was ideally suited to Science Fantasy and he became a regular contributor. He published some conventional stories in the British magazines, but over the next few years Ballard's more traditional science fiction material appeared mostly in the American market, with Science Fantasy and New Worlds reserved for more experimental material that was a harbinger of New Wave science fiction. Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné series, about a sword and sorcery anti-hero, began with "The Dreaming City" in the June 1961 Science Fantasy, and Moorcock appeared frequently thereafter: he had either a story or an essay (and sometimes both) in all but four of the remaining issues edited by Carnell. Terry Pratchett's first story, "The Hades Business", appeared in the August 1963 issue. Ashley regards the early 1960s as one of the high points of the magazine; it was nominated for the Hugo Award for each of the last three years in which Carnell edited it, from 1962 to 1964, but it never won. When Kyril Bonfiglioli took over in 1964, he complained in his first editorial that he had "just read through a quarter of a million words of ms [manuscript] and half of it was so bad it made me blush". He asked Brian Aldiss to help; the only unsold stories Aldiss had were from his early days, "written before I got the hang of things", but Bonfiglioli told Aldiss, "They can't possibly be worse than the rubbish that's being submitted". Aldiss provided four stories for the first two issues, under his own name and two pseudonyms, "Jael Cracken" and "John Runciman". Bonfiglioli's third issue included Keith Roberts' first two stories: "Escapism", a time travel tale, and "Anita", the first in a series about a witch; Roberts became a frequent contributor both under his own name and as "Alistair Bevan", and also provided the artwork for several covers. The Day of the Minotaur, another historical fantasy by Thomas Burnett Swann, began serialisation in the same issue under the title The Blue Monkeys. Swann's novel The Weirwoods was also serialised in the magazine, with no change of title. Other new writers who began to appear under Bonfiglioli's editorship included Josephine Saxton and Brian Stableford. Bonfiglioli's focus on stories that he liked personally, rather than on a specific editorial policy, led author Christopher Priest to describe Science Fantasy under Bonfiglioli's editorship as "a literate and charmingly eccentric magazine, with an atmosphere all its own". At the World Science Fiction Convention in 1965, held in London, Bonfiglioli persuaded several well-known writers to appear in an "all-star issue ... with specially written stories round the theme of 'sacrifice'". The issue in question was the first one under the new title of Impulse, in March 1966; it included fiction by James Blish, Brian Aldiss, Harry Harrison, J.G. Ballard, Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, and Keith Roberts, who contributed "The Signaller", the first story in his Pavane sequence. The second issue was also high quality, with another Pavane story and a short story by John Brunner from his "Traveller in Black" series. Subsequent issues did not sustain this high level, but overall, in Ashley's opinion, the twelve issues of Impulse contained "some of the best SF and fantasy ever published in British magazines". Christopher Priest's first story, "The Run", appeared in the May 1966 issue, and Chris Boyce's second story, "George", was published in June 1966. Two novels were serialised in Impulse, both well-received: Harry Harrison's Make Room\! Make Room\! (later made into the movie Soylent Green), and Moorcock's The Ice Schooner. Other stories listed by Ashley include Thomas Disch's "The Roaches" and "The Number You Have Just Reached", and Aldiss's "The Eyes of the Blind King". Stableford also praises the covers for the last few issues, which were mostly done by Keith Roberts in a semi-abstract style unlike conventional genre art. ## Bibliographic details The editorial succession at Science Fantasy was as follows: - Walter Gillings: Summer 1950 – Winter 1950. - John Carnell: Winter 1951–1952 – April 1964. - Kyril Bonfiglioli: June–July 1964 – September 1966. - Harry Harrison and Keith Roberts: October 1966 – February 1967. The publisher was Nova Publications until April 1964, and Roberts & Vinter Ltd thereafter. Science Fantasy was digest-sized for its first two issues. The size increased to a large digest for the next four issues, but with issue seven it returned to a small digest again, and remained in that format until the June–July 1964 issue, which was issued in paperback format. The remaining issues, including all those under the Impulse title, were published as paperbacks. It initially was priced at 2/-; the price was cut to 1/6 for the third issue, but returned to 2/- with the seventh issue. With issue 11 (December 1954) the price returned to 2/-, and it rose to 2/6 with issue 46 and to 3/- with issue 61. When the format changed to paperback with issue 65 the price dropped again to 2/6, and remained there until the title change to Impulse. All the twelve Impulse issues were priced at 3/6. The page count began at 96, and rose to 128 with issue 7. Issues 36 through 63 were 112 pages, and the final digest-sized issue was 124 pages. The paperback issues were 128 pages under the Science Fantasy title, and 160 pages for the Impulse issues. Volume numbering began with two volumes of three issues, but the second volume began with volume 2, number 4 instead of restarting the issue number at 1 as would usually be done. From issue 7 the volume number was dropped completely. The schedule was initially quite irregular, with the first two issues, in Summer and Winter 1950, followed almost a year later by a Winter 1951–52 issue. Spring and Autumn 1952 were followed by Spring 1953 and then another long delay to the seventh issue which was dated 1954, without a month or season given. The schedule became more regular thereafter, with May 1954 inaugurating a bimonthly schedule that lasted till November 1955, except that September 1954 was followed by a December issue, and June 1955 was followed by September. After February, May and August 1955, the December 1956 issue began a regular bimonthly sequence that was marred only by the appearance of a November 1959 issue between the August and December issues. After the switch to paperback, the sequence ran as follows: June–July 1964, July–August 1964, September–October 1964, December 1964 – January 1965, January–February 1965, and then monthly from March 1965 to the end. There have been no anthologies drawn solely from the pages of Science Fantasy, but Weird Shadows From Beyond, edited by John Carnell, and published by Corgi Books in 1965, drew eight of its ten stories from the magazine. In 2013, a 371-page volume written by John Boston and curated by Damien Broderick, titled Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950–1967 was published by Borgo/Wildside in the US. It discusses, sometimes in detail, every issue, story, writer, cover, and even advertisement of the magazine.

All Souls (TV series)

American paranormal medical drama television series

All Souls is an American paranormal hospital drama television series created by Stuart Gillard and Stephen Tolkin and inspired by Lars von Trier's miniseries The Kingdom. It originally aired for one season on UPN from April 17, 2001, to August 31, 2001. The series follows the medical staff of the haunted teaching hospital All Souls. While working as a medical intern, protagonist Dr. Mitchell Grace (Grayson McCouch) encounters various spirits, and discovers that the doctors are running unethical experiments on their patients. The executive producers included Aaron Spelling, E. Duke Vincent, and Mark Frost. Gillard developed the premise for All Souls from his belief that a medical facility would be an ideal setting for a horror series and his research on statistics of deaths that had taken place in a hospital. Frost also felt that there was a close connection between modern medicine and the supernatural. Though the series was set in Boston, filming took place in Montreal, Canada. Episodes were shot in a working psychiatric hospital, and real patients appear in the background of several scenes. All Souls had low viewership, and was placed on hiatus following the broadcast of the first two episodes and canceled after the season was broadcast. Critical response to All Souls was primarily positive; commentators praised its use of horror and paranormal elements. Critics had mixed reviews for the show's content and style when compared to other horror and science-fiction television series, specifically The X-Files and the work of American writer Stephen King. ## Premise Described as a "paranormal hospital drama" by UPN, All Souls follows the medical staff working in the Boston teaching hospital of the same name. The area has a history dating back to the American Civil War. A photograph taken during the war is prominently featured in the series, as it shows individuals who still work as part of the staff. The hauntings at All Souls started during the Civil War, when a Dr. Abramson conducted experiments on his patients following the death of his three sons in combat. The ghosts of Abramson's victims remain in the hospital to the present day. The facility is composed of "dungeons, trick elevators, deserted floors, passageways filled with smoke and dripping water" and "dark, dank, cavelike areas". It had previously functioned as a psychiatric hospital, which was housed on the upper levels of the structure's tower. The main narrative includes "hints of deeper, good-versus-evil contests". Taking inspiration from the horror film genre, the series includes "extreme closeups [and] bizarre sexual transformations". In the pilot episode, a seduction scene with a doctor and a young woman ends when she is revealed to be a corpse, and several women die after being admitted for treatment. Although the series follows a specific mythology and continuity, each episode has its own self-contained story. ## Characters UPN executives had pitched the series as following "young doctors in peril at a haunted old Boston Hospital" who must contend with "a healthy dose of terrifying paranormal occurrences and gripping medical emergencies". In the pilot episode, Dr. Mitchell Grace (Grayson McCouch) begins working at the hospital immediately after graduating from medical school. He had specifically chosen the All Souls medical program, refusing offers from the Mayo Clinic and the Yale–New Haven Hospital, due to his personal connection with the hospital. Grace's father died in 1978 while working as a janitor in the hospital, after contracting a mysterious illness. Grace serves as the show's lead character, and functions as a detective as well as a doctor while trying to understand the inner workings of All Souls. As he works, Grace encounters both good and evil ghosts, and discovers medical experiments are being conducted under the guidance of the board of directors. Spirits include "a mad scientist and his Igor-like errand boy", and a woman dressed in 19th century fashion pushing a baby carriage through the halls. Grace is haunted by visions of his father, and is somehow connected with the ghost Lazarus and Civil War doctors. Dr. Dante Ambrosious (Jean LeClerc), the chair of the facility's board, is shown to have made deals with the evil spirits. Grace works closely with several allies during his time at All Souls, but is the one of few people who is fully aware of the hospital's supernatural occurrences. He collaborates with registered nurse Glory St. Claire (Irma P. Hall), who has a long history with the facility and "knows more than she can say or, at least, explain". She is characterized by her telepathic powers. According to St. Claire, "the dead have power" in the hospital and the "forces of good" residing inside All Souls had foretold of Grace's arrival for several decades. She connects with Grace by holding his hands to allow him to see the "tortured soul" in the hospital. Grace finds further support from Dr. Nicole De Brae (Serena Scott Thomas), Dr. Bradley Sterling (Daniel Cosgrove), and Patrick Fortado (Adam Rodriguez). De Brae acts as the hospital's chief of staff and Sterling works alongside Grace as a medical intern. Fortado is Grace's close friend, a paraplegic who has great skill at hacking. The exact nature of De Brae's loyalty is called into question, and Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle wondered if she will serve as a love interest or be revealed as one of the hospital's spirits. Other members of the medical staff include the psychologist Dr. Philomena Cullen (Reiko Aylesworth) and the orderly Joey (Christian Tessier). ## Production ### Concept and filming Created by Stuart Gillard and Stephen Tolkin, All Souls was produced by Spelling Television and Uncle Monkey Productions. Along with the show's creators, the executive producers included Aaron Spelling, E. Duke Vincent, and Mark Frost. Media outlets found the pairing of Spelling and Frost for the production strange. Variety'''s Steven Oxman described it as a "merging of the beauty and the beast"; he equated Spelling to the beauty for incorporating the "sleek and superficial good looks" and Frost to the beast for his inclusion of "surreal, beastly creepiness". The duo had previously collaborated on the crime drama television series Buddy Faro. Gillard felt that a medical facility would be an ideal candidate for a horror show, explaining: "Hospitals are scary places even if you're healthy (and) going to visit somebody." While conducting research to develop the series' concept, he was surprised that roughly 80,000 people die in hospitals every year due to unknown causes. Echoing Gillard's comments, Frost argued there is a close connection between the supernatural and modern medicine. Describing a hospital as a "pretty paranormal place", he felt that medicine would "only have to go one step further to get to the paranormal". All Souls was inspired by the Lars von Trier miniseries The Kingdom, and has been compared to the Stephen King television series Kingdom Hospital. While promoting the series, Frost had said the show had been partly inspired by the science fiction drama The X-Files. Tom Burstyn handled the cinematography, and the production designers were Michael Joy and Collin Niemi. James L. Conway contributed to the show as a consulting producer, and Joel McNeely composed the musical score. Although the show is set in Boston, filming took place in Montreal, Canada. The episodes were shot in a functioning asylum constructed in Montreal during the 19th century, with real patients walking around during certain scenes, which Frost said added realism. ### Development and casting The series had originated from a production deal between Syfy and CBS Paramount Network Television. Thomas Vitale, the senior vice president of programming and original movies for Syfy, described the partnership as a way to add more "genre programming to our schedule". It was one of three series (alongside Chains of Love and Special Unit 2) UPN ordered as mid-season replacements during the 2000–2001 television season. The network had requested six episodes of All Souls when picking it up for air, and all of them had been shot before its cancellation. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's John Levesque felt that the network decided to produce All Souls in an attempt to find another successful series following the end of Star Trek: Voyager. While Levesque thought the shows were "promising", he did not believe any of them were a "slam-dunk". Rodriquez initially refused to audition as he wanted to be a part of the 2000 drama The Street instead. After the producers contacted him repeatedly, he read for the parts of Fortado and Sterling five times and talked to Spelling. After he was not cast in The Street, he accepted the part of Fortado; he particularly wanted to work on a show produced by Spelling. Filming in a wheelchair gave him an increased awareness and appreciation for handicapped people. ## Episodes ## Broadcast history All Souls was initially broadcast on Tuesday nights at 9 pm EST, and aired directly after the reality television show Chains of Love. The series carried a TV-PG parental rating, meaning it was judged "unsuitable for young children". It premiered on April 17, 2001, and was viewed by 2.1 million people; Nielsen Media Research ranked it 105th for the week. UPN placed the series on hiatus on April 30, 2001, due to concerns about its low ratings; only two episodes had aired. After announcing the show's hiatus, UPN executives said it was not canceled at that point. Despite the network's claims, media commentators believed it would be removed from air following its poor performance. The series returned in August and the pilot and remaining episodes aired on Friday nights at 9 pm EST, and were burned off throughout August. Overall, All Souls was broadcast for a total of 360 minutes. While discussing the cancellation, McCouch felt it was "doomed to fail" from the beginning and referred to UPN as "a loser network at that time" due its treatment of the series. Cosgrove disagreed with McCouch's sentiment and believed the show's lack of success was not tied to the network specifically. Rodriquez believed All Souls was unsuccessful as it was "just a little ahead of its time"; he felt that the program was better suited for television one to two years following its initial broadcast. The series has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray, or licensed to an online-streaming service. ## Critical reception All Souls has received positive critical feedback. Eric Mink of the New York Daily News praised the show's use of horror, and wrote that it would "set the dragging knuckles of UPN's core audience all a-tingle". The Los Angeles Times' Howard Rosenberg called the series "paranormal fun", and television critic Kevin McDonough referenced All Souls as "a classic Aaron Spelling production" primarily due to its editing and special effects. McDonough further described All Souls as "the best show you never watched", responding positively to the show's premise and actors. Mink responded positively to the series' storylines and characters, believing they had potential for further development. Reception of the series' pilot was mixed, with television critics divided over its structure. Rob Owen of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gave the first episode a positive review, believing it set up enough story elements to show promise. Steven Oxman felt that the pilot made effective use of horror tropes, citing a scene in which a preserved fetus moves as a highlight. LA Weekly's Robert Lloyd had a more mixed response to the series; while he felt that the Grace's initial interactions with St. Clair gave away too much of the plot, he found it "well-made within the limits of its ambitions". Critics had mixed reviews for All Souls, when compared to other horror and science-fiction narratives. Tim Goodman noted that All Souls had aspects of The X-Files as well as from The Twilight Zone, Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining, and the medical drama genre. Even though Goodman felt the series had a "scattershot approach", he felt that all the elements worked with one another. Oxman was critical of the show's originality and its setting in a former asylum, saying it was similar to King's work and the 1996 film Extreme Measures, and felt it had "a superficial gloss" when compared to Twin Peaks. Despite this criticism, he called All Souls "potentially the scariest network show since The X-Files''".

Yuzuru Hanyu Olympic seasons

Olympic champion in men's figure skating 2014 and 2018

Yuzuru Hanyu, a former competitive figure skater from Japan, participated in the Winter Olympic Games three times, winning two gold medals (in 2014 and 2018) and placing fourth in 2022. In 2014, he became the first Asian men's singles skater to win at the Olympics. At 19 years old, he was also the youngest male skater to win the Olympic title since American Dick Button in 1948. In 2018, Hanyu became the first male single skater in 66 years to win two consecutive Olympic gold medals since Button in 1952. In his three Olympic seasons, Hanyu skated to three different short and free skate programs each, with their background and making being broadly covered by the media. In the first season, 2013–14, he became the first Asian and second skater across all disciplines to win the Olympics, Worlds, and the Grand Prix Final in the same season, after Russian Alexei Yagudin in 2001–02. Hanyu also set two world records in the short program, becoming the first skater to score above 100 points in that competition segment, at the 2014 Winter Olympics. In 2017–18, he set another short program record of 112.72 points, which remained the standing record in the old +3/-3 GOE judging system. At the 2017 Rostelecom Cup, he also landed his first quadruple Lutz jump in competition. In his third and last Olympic season, 2021–22, Hanyu won his sixth national title and went for the quadruple Axel jump for the first time, with his attempt at the Beijing Olympics being the closest in competition up to then. On July 19, 2022, he announced his decision to conclude his competitive figure skating career and turn professional. For his achievements at the Winter Olympics, Hanyu was bestowed with the People's Honor Award by the prime minister of Japan (2018) as well as two Medals of Honor with Purple Ribbon (2014, 2018). He also received the Kikuchi Kan Prize for his accomplishments in figure skating (2022), including his back-to-back titles at the Winter Games. Two monuments honoring his Olympic wins were installed at the International Center Station in his hometown of Sendai. Hanyu was featured in various prestigious lists, such as Forbes' 30 Under 30 Asia (2018), and made it to ESPN's top 10 of the greatest Olympians of the 21st century. In 2022, he was ranked sixth in the list of most-searched athletes on Google Search worldwide. ## 2013–14 season ### Key events before the 2013–14 season In the 2010–11 season, Hanyu moved up to senior level as the reigning World and National Junior champion as well as the Junior Grand Prix Final winner. He faced significant competition in the Japanese senior field, including Daisuke Takahashi, Nobunari Oda, Takahiko Kozuka, and Tatsuki Machida, who all had finished ahead of him at the previous Japan Figure Skating Championships. In that season, Hanyu landed his first successful quadruple jump, a quad toe loop, and won his first medal at a main international senior competition at the 2011 Four Continents Championships, where he placed second behind Takahashi. After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which had caused severe damage to his home rink in Sendai, Hanyu was forced to move his training base for the rest of the season. He participated in 60 ice shows to get additional practice time and raise money for the areas affected by the disaster. He launched the following season at the 2011 Nebelhorn Trophy, where he won his first gold medal at an international senior competition. During the event, he shared his career goals with the media: > My goals for the future are to land all quad jumps in competition. I would also like to learn the quad Axel. Another goal is to win the next two Olympics, or at least win medals. At the 2012 World Championships, Hanyu became the youngest Japanese World medalist, finishing third behind then two-time world champion Patrick Chan and Daisuke Takahashi, who both acknowledged Hanyu as a potential strong rival in the future. Upon the conclusion of the 2011–12 season, Hanyu changed coaches from Nanami Abe, with whom he had trained since 2004, and moved to Canada to train with Brian Orser at the Toronto Cricket Club. His main motivation for the change were the consistent quadruple jumps by Orser's student Javier Fernández. The move resulted in immediate success; in the following season, Hanyu landed his first quad Salchow in international competition and set his first two world records in the short program segment. He also beat Chan for the first time in competition at the Grand Prix Final in Sochi, which served as a test event for the 2014 Winter Olympics, and won his first national senior title at the 2012–13 Japan Championships, defeating the reigning and five-time national champion, Daisuke Takahashi. Despite a knee injury and ankle sprain, he managed to finish fourth at the subsequent World Championships behind Patrick Chan (gold), Denis Ten (silver), and Javier Fernández (bronze), helping to secure three berths for the Japanese national team at the 2014 Winter Olympics. ### Programs of the 2013–14 season #### Short program: "Parisienne Walkways" For his first Olympic season, Hanyu returned to his short program "Parisienne Walkways" from the 2012–13 season. The music piece is a medley of the songs "Parisienne Walkways" by Gary Moore and "Hoochie Coochie Man" by the Jeff Healey Band from their album Live at Montreux 1999. Hanyu scored two world records with the program in his two Grand Prix events in the previous season. "Parisienne Walkways" was the first of Hanyu's multiple collaborations with Canadian choreographer Jeffrey Buttle. For Buttle, who was also choreographing a short program for the defending three-time world champion Patrick Chan in the same season, it was important to highlight the different strengths of the two skaters. In Hanyu's case, Buttle wanted not only to create a program that fit the wild abandon in his skating but also to help him to overcome his shyness and have some fun. He pointed out Hanyu's engagement and active role in the creation of the choreography: "It's always nice to have someone who will sort of play along with the choreography instead of just standing and waiting for me to say something". Later, in 2018, Buttle named "Parisienne Walkways" as the most memorable of the three programs he had choreographed for Hanyu up to then. He praised Hanyu's ability to pull in the audience and his maturity as a performer at such young age. The costume for the program was created by Japanese costume designer Tadashi Nagashima. For the 2013–14 season, the color of the shirt was changed from grey to blue. #### Free skate program: Romeo and Juliet For the free skate, Hanyu selected the music from Franco Zeffirelli's film Romeo and Juliet (1968) composed by Nino Rota. In the 2011–12 season, he had already performed to Craig Armstrong's soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann's film Romeo + Juliet (1996), earning him his first world championship medal. The music piece was Hanyu's personal choice; the program was meant to mark the culmination of his first four senior seasons. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, his success at the 2012 World Championships, and the subsequent coaching change were three key events of that period that influenced his decision, as he stated: "I spent two years with Nanami Abe in Sendai and another two years with Brian and his team in Toronto. I wanted to create a program that expresses my gratitude for these four years." Romeo + Juliet was the first free skate program he had skated after the earthquake, having performed it at multiple ice shows across Japan. The support he had received from his fans, coaches, and family at that time made the music piece meaningful and precious to him. However, he switched from Armstrong's to Rota's soundtrack for the Olympic season as he thought it stood out the most among the different versions of Romeo and Juliet, and he had long wished to skate to that specific music piece. Hanyu asked Canadian choreographer David Wilson to create the program for him, but Wilson felt "conflicted" because he had previously created choreography to the piece for many skaters, including Sasha Cohen's free skate program for the 2006 Winter Olympics. In his letter to Wilson, Hanyu stressed his desire to skate to Rota's soundtrack and win the Olympics with it: "I don't want to wait until the next Olympics to be the Olympic champion, I want to be the Olympic champion now. And I'm willing to do anything to make that happen, so please, please help me." Wilson, who had already rejected Hanyu's request to skate to The Phantom of the Opera in the previous season, eventually agreed after realizing that Hanyu would use the music piece either way. The costume of the program was designed by American figure skater Johnny Weir, whom Hanyu named as one of his skating idols, and made by Stephanie Handler. The color and shape of the top were influenced by Weir's personal preference for "white and sparkly" costumes. ### 2013 pre-Olympic events Hanyu's first competition of the Olympic season was the 2013 Finlandia Trophy, where he won the gold medal after placing first in both competition segments, setting unofficial personal best scores with 180.93 points in the free skate and 265.59 in the combined total. His assignments in the 2013–14 Grand Prix series were the Skate Canada International and Trophée Éric Bompard. At Skate Canada, he moved up from third place in the short program to second overall and won silver behind Patrick Chan. Hanyu expressed his disappointment with both performances, having received negative grades of execution (GOE) for all three attempted quadruple jumps and another three jumping passes. At the Trophée Éric Bompard, he skated a clean short program and improved his world record score from the 2012 NHK Trophy by 0.05 points. However, he finished second behind Chan, who had scored world records in all three competition segments with 98.52 points in the short program, 196.75 in the free skate, and 295.27 in the combined total. The two second-place finishes qualified Hanyu for the 2013–14 Grand Prix Final in Fukuoka, where he placed first in the short program and set a new world record with 99.84 points. He also won the free skate despite a fall on the quadruple Salchow, scoring new personal bests of 193.41 in the free skate and 293.25 in the combined total, and claiming his first Grand Prix Final title. In December 2013, Hanyu competed at the Japan Championships, where he went on to win his second national title after placing first in both competition segments. His scores of 103.10 in the short program and 297.80 in the combined total both exceeded the incumbent world records. However, they were not officially recognized as new highest scores because the International Skating Union (ISU) only recorded results that were achieved at international competitions, not national championships. Hanyu was subsequently appointed as part of the Japanese team for the 2014 Winter Olympics and World Championships. ### 2014 Winter Olympics Hanyu went into his first Olympics as one of the gold medal favorites besides Patrick Chan, Daisuke Takahashi, and Russian Evgeni Plushenko, the 2006 Olympic champion as well as the 2002 and 2010 Olympic silver medalist. Hanyu participated in the men's short program of the inaugural figure skating team event, where he competed for the first time against Plushenko whom he had admired growing up. Hanyu performed a clean program and scored an Olympic event record of 97.98, winning that segment and earning 10 points for the Japanese team, which had finished fifth at the end of the event. In the short program of the men's individual event, Hanyu broke his world record with a score of 101.45, becoming the first skater in history to surpass 100 points in the short program. He went into the free skate with a near four-point lead ahead of Patrick Chan, but fell on the opening quad Salchow and put both hands down on a triple flip. Despite the mistakes, Hanyu managed to place first in the segment and score new Olympic records of 178.64 in the free skate and 280.09 overall, surpassing Plushenko's and Evan Lysacek's winning scores from the two previous Winter Games by more than 20 points. In the final standings, Hanyu finished first ahead of Patrick Chan (silver) and Denis Ten (bronze), capturing the first Olympic gold medal for Japan in the men's singles event. It was the second Olympic title in figure skating for the nation, following Shizuka Arakawa's win in the women's event at the 2006 Winter Olympics. Hanyu's victory also marked the first time an Asian country won gold in the men's event, and he became the youngest Olympic men's champion since American Dick Button in 1948. In addition, he was the only Japanese athlete across all sports to win gold at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. After the competition, Hanyu expressed his dissatisfaction with the free skate, but also his determination as the reigning Olympic champion to become stronger and work hard to create a new era, pledging to compete again at the next Winter Olympics in 2018. ### 2014 post-Olympic events and after season honors Hanyu concluded the season with a victory at the 2014 World Championships in Saitama. He sat in third place after a fall on a quad toe loop in the short program, trailing fellow Japanese skater Tatsuki Machida by about seven points. Hanyu came back with a strong free skate, landing both planned quadruple jumps successfully, and claimed his first world title with a total score of 282.59, winning by one of the smallest margins of 0.33 points ahead of silver medalist Machida. Hanyu became the first Asian and second skater across all disciplines to win the Olympics, Worlds, and the Grand Prix Final in the same season, after Alexei Yagudin in 2001–02. He finished the season being ranked first in the world standings and the season's world rankings. On April 26, 2014, after returning to his hometown of Sendai, a parade was organized by Miyagi Prefecture, Sendai City, and Miyagi Prefecture Skating Federation to celebrate Hanyu's Olympic gold medal. It was held along the Higashi Nibancho Street in the city center and attended by about 92,000 people. Two days later, Hanyu was bestowed with the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon by the Government of Japan for his contributions in sports. In June, a special ice show titled Together on Ice was held at Xebio Arena Sendai in Hanyu's hometown of Sendai to celebrate his success of winning the Olympics, Worlds, and Grand Prix Final in one season. The show featured skaters and artists with connections to the region like the band Monkey Majik as well as overseas skaters related to Hanyu, including Evgeni Plushenko, Johnny Weir, and Javier Fernández. In May 2015, the Madame Tussauds museum in Tokyo unveiled a life-size wax figure of Hanyu in the costume and ending pose of his Olympic short program "Parisienne Walkways". On July 15, 2022, the costume on the wax figure was changed to the one, which he had used for his free skate program Origin in the 2019–20 season. In memory of Hanyu's and Shizuka Arakawa's victories at the Winter Olympics, two monuments were installed in April 2017 in their hometown near the south exit of the International Center Station on the Sendai Subway Tozai Line. Like his wax figure, Hanyu's monument also depicts the ending pose of the "Parisienne Walkways" program. ## 2017–18 season ### Key events before the 2017–18 season In his second Olympic cycle, Hanyu improved his short program results, having scored above 100 points five times in 17 international competitions before the 2017–18 season. However, in 2014–15, he was struggling with his technical layout, which featured a quadruple toe loop and a triple-triple combination placed in the second half. The issue continued at the 2015 Skate Canada, where he placed sixth in the segment with two invalid jumping passes. While his coach Brian Orser suggested a more "conservative" change, Hanyu decided to add another quad, stating: "I thought by the time of the Pyeongchang Olympics, you cannot win without a short program that includes two quads with difficult entries and exits—plus excellent footwork, spins, and presentation. As the reigning Olympic champion, I want to be absolutely dominant." The offensive strategy earned him back-to-back world records at the 2015 NHK Trophy and the Grand Prix Final, the latter remaining the highest score with 110.95 points until the Olympic season. In his short program at the 2016 Autumn Classic, he also became the first skater to land a quadruple loop jump in international competition. In the free skate segment, Hanyu was the dominant skater of the Olympic cycle, having set three world records as well as the highest score in all three seasons before 2017–18. At the 2015 NHK Trophy, he became the first skater to score above 200 points, improving Patrick Chan’s previous record by almost 20 points. Hanyu cleared the 200 mark five times before the Olympic season, including his performance at the 2015–16 Grand Prix Final, which earned him maximum scores for four technical elements as well as 24 perfect marks of 10.00 in the program components. In 2016–17, he increased the technical difficulty of his free skate, which featured four quadruple jumps, including a quad loop. At the 2017 World Championships, he became the first skater to surpass 220 points with a score of 223.20, which remained the standing record until the Olympic season. In July 2022, Hanyu named this free skate performance of his program Hope and Legacy as the one that he thought would represent him best and was the most perfectly executed of his competitive career. Despite a series of injuries, including a heavy crash with Chinese skater Yan Han in the warm-up at the 2014 Cup of China, Hanyu managed to become the first skater to win four consecutive Grand Prix Finals. He also added a second world title and two more national titles to his medal record and became the first skater to score above 300 points in the combined total. However, he also suffered defeats by Javier Fernández at two World Championships as well as American Nathan Chen at the 2017 Four Continents Championships in Pyeongchang, which served as a test event for the 2018 Winter Olympics. By the end of the 2016–17 season, four other skaters had also passed 300 points in the combined total score: Fernández, Chen, Jin Boyang, and Hanyu's compatriot Shoma Uno. ### Programs of the 2017–18 season #### Short program: Ballade No. 1 For the short program, Hanyu decided to use Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23, composed by Frédéric Chopin and performed by Krystian Zimerman, for a third time after the 2014–15 and 2015–16 season. With the program, he set back-to-back world records at the 2015 NHK Trophy and the Grand Prix Final. The latter remained the incumbent record until the Olympic season. Ballade No. 1 was also the first and only short program to score above 110 points at that time. The program was choreographed by Jeffrey Buttle, who supported Hanyu's decision to reuse Ballade No. 1 for the Olympic season. In his opinion, it was important to choose a piece that the skater was familiar and comfortable with when facing the additional pressure at the Olympics. In May 2017, Hanyu debuted the Olympic version of Ballade No. 1 at the Japanese touring ice show Fantasy on Ice in Makuhari with a new distribution of the elements, various choreographic changes, and increased technical difficulty, including a quadruple loop jump as well as a quad toe loop-triple toe loop combination in the second half of the program. On the third day of the show, for the first time, he skated a televised clean short program that featured a quad loop. After the show, Hanyu stated in an interview that he preferred the placement of the steps and spins in the layout he had used at the 2015 NHK Trophy, while in the new version the jumps matched the musical structure of the program better. He also noted that the new layout resembled the original choreography of the program, with the opening jump entered and exited by a spread eagle, and a quadruple toe loop placed in the second half. However, compared to his performances from the 2014–15 season, Hanyu now had the required technical skills to realize his and Buttle's initial vision for the program. The original costume of Ballade No. 1 was designed and created by Tadashi Nagashima. The design used at the 2017 Rostelecom Cup and the 2018 Winter Olympics was the fourth version of the costume. Compared to the version of the 2015–16 season, the most striking changes were the additional rhinestones at the collar and the removal of golden trim at the waist and sleeves. #### Free skate program: Seimei For the free skate, Hanyu decided to repeat his program Seimei to the soundtrack of the films Onmyōji and Onmyōji II (The Yin-Yang Master) composed by Shigeru Umebayashi. In the 2015–16 season, he set back-to-back world records with the program at the NHK Trophy and the Grand Prix Final, becoming the first skater to score above 200 points in the free skate. The good results and strong performances at past events encouraged him to bring back the program for the Olympics: "I was able to perform well to that music so I knew I wanted to use it in the Olympic season. I've been saving it for this occasion". Compared to the technical layout of the 2015–16 season, Hanyu planned to increase the difficulty of the program, with a quad Lutz and quad loop as the first two elements and another three quadruple jumps in the second half. He also noted the improvements in the program's composition compared to the previous season and his aim to create "strong, attacking choreography". In the program, Hanyu portrayed the onmyōji Abe no Seimei, a Japanese astronomer of the Heian period in the 10th century. He debuted the program at the Dreams on Ice show in June 2015 and shared his thoughts on the music choice, stating: "I want to expand my performing scale, and I want to do something Japanese. I think among all amateur male skaters, I am the one who fits traditional Japanese style the most". Alongside the movies' storyline, which contains fantastical elements as well as energetic battle scenes, Hanyu wanted to illustrate the duality of sensitivity and strength, femininity and masculinity, that he believes to exist in every human being. The program was choreographed by Canadian ice dancer Shae-Lynn Bourne, who had created Hanyu's free skate program to The Phantom of the Opera for the 2014–15 season. Not familiar with the historical and cultural background of the music piece, Bourne conducted her own research by watching the movies as well studying the dance movements and story of the program. In an interview, she noted how fast and seamless the process had been and acknowledged Hanyu's active role in it. In August 2022, Bourne named Seimei as the program that left the deepest impression on her among the five free skates she had choreographed for Hanyu in the course of his competitive career. Hanyu's commitment was also noted by Takuya Yamaguchi, the chief priest of the Seimei Shrine in Kyoto, who met Hanyu during his visit and was impressed by his research and knowledge about Seimei. To broaden his performance skills and better incorporate the role of the onmyōji, Bourne advised Hanyu to arrange a meeting with Mansai Nomura, who had portrayed the character in the two movies. A well-known stage actor in the traditional Japanese kyōgen theater, Nomura introduced Hanyu to the basic patterns and movements of kata and gave him advice on his posture and hand movements during the program. Feeling that a Japanese music piece might be better edited by a Japanese music editor, Hanyu personally sent a request to Keiichi Yano. Having a clear vision of the music he wanted, he exchanged over 50 emails with Yano, resulting in a total of 32 different music cuts in a span of one month. In addition, Hanyu recorded his own breath for the opening of the program, stating: "I want some trigger sound, and I want it to be something like a sound of a breath, not a sound of an instrument." The costume was designed by Satomi Ito, who had created four different versions of the top between 2015 and 2017. The design was inspired by the clothes of the royal family in the Heian period. The biggest change to the 2015–16 season version was the removal of majority of the embroidery to reduce the weight of the costume. The version created for the 2017 Autumn Classic differed slightly in colors from the Olympic one. Hanyu requested the use of white patterned fabric with purple and green-colored parts as well as a pentagram, one of Seimei's notable symbols. ### 2017 pre-Olympic events At the 2017 Autumn Classic, his first competition of the season, Hanyu received 112.72 points for his short program, breaking the world record he had set at the 2015–16 Grand Prix Final (110.95). He executed all of his jumping passes cleanly, with two of them receiving the then highest possible grade of execution of +3 unanimously from the judges. Due to pain in his right knee, Hanyu chose not to attempt the quadruple loop in the competition. In the free skate, he performed an error-filled program, placing fifth in the segment and winning the silver medal behind Javier Fernández. After the competition Hanyu noted: "That seems to be the constant theme to overcome in my skating life—the big gaps between my good performances and my bad performances." His scheduled competitions for the 2017–18 Grand Prix series were the Rostelecom Cup and NHK Trophy. At the former, Hanyu was second after the short program. He under-rotated and lost his balance on the opening quadruple loop and fell after his jump combination. In the free skate, he landed his first quadruple Lutz in competition and received 1.14 GOE for the jump element. Despite making mistakes on two of his other jumping passes, his performance pulled him into first place in the segment, with a score of 195.92. He finished second overall behind Nathan Chen by about three points. On November 9, 2017, Hanyu injured a lateral ligament in his right ankle while practicing the quad Lutz. As a result, he withdrew from the NHK Trophy, which automatically disqualified him from competing for his fifth consecutive Grand Prix Final title. With his recovery taking longer than expected, he subsequently decided to also withdraw from the Japan Championships even though the event served as an Olympic qualifier for Japanese skaters. Despite his withdrawal, Hanyu was assured of a spot on the Olympic team, given his top world standing as well as his position as the reigning world champion and defending Olympic champion. On December 24, the Japan Skating Federation (JSF) announced that he was assigned to represent Japan at the 2018 Winter Olympics and World Championships. However, he would not participate in the Olympic team event to have more time to practice and prepare at his training base in Toronto for the individual event. ### 2018 Winter Olympics Hanyu arrived in South Korea amid intense media coverage on February 11, 2018, accompanied by a heavy security detail. His practice sessions at the Olympics were a subject of media scrutiny and attended by hundreds of reporters. At a press conference on February 13, held after one of his official practices, Hanyu revealed that he had been off the ice until January and only started executing triple jumps three weeks and quadruple jumps two weeks before the competition. He stated that he still had not decided which technical elements he would use for the individual event. On February 16, Hanyu performed a flawless short program, scoring a new Olympic event record of 111.68 points and placing first in the segment. The score was only 1.04 points shy of his personal best and the then world record of 112.72. In the free skate, he performed a solid program that included four quadruple jumps, three of them landed cleanly and the first two receiving maximum scores. He set another Olympic record of 317.85 in the combined total, becoming the first skater to clear 300 points at the Winter Olympics. This result earned him his second consecutive Olympic gold medal, a feat that had not been achieved since Dick Button's back-to-back titles in 1948 and 1952. Hanyu's medal was the 1000th awarded in the history of the Winter Olympic Games. He stood on the podium with his compatriot Shoma Uno (silver) and training mate Javier Fernández (bronze). According to Twitter's database, Hanyu was the most mentioned athlete and his win the most discussed moment of the 2018 Winter Olympics on the social media platform. During a press conference on February 18, Hanyu revealed that he had performed his Olympic practices and programs on strong painkillers. He admitted that if he had not been taking medication, he would have been unable to attempt or land jumps. The ankle injury from November, which had led to a three-month hiatus from competing and a lowered technical difficulty of his Olympic programs, was more severe than anticipated, and he would continue to take painkillers until the conclusion of the exhibition gala. Hanyu also stated that his future competition plans were unclear since the injury had not healed yet, and he wanted to focus on full recovery. However, he said he had no intention to quit skating, and that his next goal would be the quadruple Axel, a jump that had not been landed in competition up to then: > I want to do [a quadruple Axel] because nobody else has. The jump that has never let me down is the triple Axel. I've probably put more time, practice and energy into it than to any other jump. One of my coaches has called the Axel "the king of jumps" and while being grateful to the triple for all it's given me, I'd like to aim for a quad. ### 2018 post-Olympic events and after season honors On March 7, 2018, the Japan Skating Federation announced that Hanyu had decided to withdraw from the upcoming World Championships to allow his injured foot to recover. A medical examination after the Olympic Games revealed that the damaged ligaments in his right ankle as well as other unspecified injuries required at least two weeks of rest and three months of rehabilitation to heal. Despite his multiple withdrawals, Hanyu managed to place first in the world standings at the end of the 2017–18 season. In April, the ice show Continues with Wings was held at Musashino Forest Sport Plaza in Tokyo to celebrate Hanyu's win of back-to-back Olympic titles. The cast featured skaters who had influenced and inspired him throughout his career, including Evgeni Plushenko, Johnny Weir, and his choreographers Shae-Lynn Bourne and Jeffrey Buttle. After the show, Hanyu reaffirmed his desire to continue skating, announcing his plans to be ready for the 2018–19 Grand Prix series and to "compete in as many events as possible". On April 22, he paraded in his hometown of Sendai to celebrate his consecutive Olympic gold medals with about 108,000 people in attendance. The event was funded by donations and proceeds earned from selling T-shirts that featured Hanyu's silhouettes and signature, generating an estimated 1.85 billion yen (US$16 million). The profit, worth approximately 22 million yen after deducting the total cost of the parade, was donated to the local figure skating federation for the purpose of strengthening and developing local skaters, including the foundation of a local competition named the Sendai Mayor's Cup. Six days later, Hanyu was awarded the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon for the second time. On June 1, it was announced that Hanyu would receive the People's Honor Award, a prestigious government commendation bestowed by the Prime Minister of Japan. However, Hanyu declined a commemorative gift which came with the award, stating that he was receiving the People's Honor Award as a representative of the people who supported him. He was the youngest among the 27 recipients since the award's creation in 1977 and the first figure skater to be given the honor. Yoshihide Suga, who had served as Chief Cabinet Secretary of Japan at that time, stated that the award had been given to appreciate Hanyu's "historic achievement" that "gave dreams and thrills to the people and hope and courage to society". In 2019, Hanyu took part in a ceremony in Sendai to unveil the design of a new monument depicting the opening pose of his free skate program Seimei, performed at his second Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. The monument was installed next to the first one, which commemorated his Olympic win in 2014. ## 2021–22 season ### Key events before the 2021–22 season After the introduction of the new +5/-5 judging system in 2018, Hanyu was the dominant skater in the men's short program, having scored above 100 points seven times in eleven international competitions, including three world records. He was also the only skater to score above 110 points multiple times and held the world record with 111.82 points before the 2021–22 Olympic season. The key to Hanyu's success in this competition segment was his high quality elements, well-rounded programs, and consistent Axel jump. At the 2021 World Championships, he landed his 50th triple Axel with positive GOE in his 51st international senior short program. In the free skate segment, Hanyu set two world records in the 2018–19 season and landed five quadruple jumps in one program for the first time in his career at the 2019–20 Grand Prix Final. He also became the first to land a quad toe loop-triple Axel sequence and a quad toe loop-Euler-triple flip combination, and he was the only skater besides Nathan Chen to score above 200 points until the Olympic season. However, Hanyu's struggles with injuries continued and his performance at the 2020–21 Japan Championships was his only free skate with all-positive grades of execution under the new judging system. He suffered defeats at multiple major events, including the 2019–20 Grand Prix Final and Japan Championships, where he placed second behind Chen and Shoma Uno, respectively. Plagued by doubts, Hanyu confessed that there was a moment where he had felt tired of competing. Despite the feeling of having evolved in various aspects of his skating compared to the record-breaking performances in 2015, his scores had become lower, making him wonder if he was "no longer needed" and worried if we was being told to retire. However, he was unwilling to disappoint the people who had supported him and decided to continue competing. In February 2020, he took a new approach by returning to his Olympic programs from 2018 and won his first gold medal at the Four Continents Championships, becoming the first male single skater to complete the Super Slam. In the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hanyu moved back from Toronto to Sendai and was coached remotely, training alone at his home rink and creating large parts of his programs' choreography himself. With his third place at the 2021 World Championships behind Chen (gold) and compatriot Yuma Kagiyama (silver), Hanyu helped to secure three Olympic berths for Japanese men and became the second male single skater after German Jan Hoffmann to win seven world medals since World War II. However, he explained that he did not feel the same drive to win the Beijing Olympics compared to the previous Winter Games, and made his goal clear for the 2021–22 season: "I am aiming for the quadruple Axel, but if the Olympics happen to be on the way to land the quad Axel, I will think about it. However, my primary goal is not to win the gold medal at the Olympics, but to succeed in four and a half revolutions." ### Programs of the 2021–22 season #### Short program: Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso For the 2021–22 season, Hanyu chose to skate to Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28, composed by Camille Saint-Saëns. For the first time in an Olympic season, Hanyu decided to use a new short program that he had not tested previously in international competition. It was his second program to a composition by Saint-Saëns after "Notte Stellata (The Swan)", which he had performed at the exhibition gala of the 2018 Winter Olympics and other events between 2016 and 2019. Hanyu stated that he had been searching for a piano piece for a long time and a short program "with an expression that only Yuzuru Hanyu can do". He also stated that Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso was a piece he had always wanted to skate to but felt that a piano version would suit his style better than the original composition for violin and orchestra. He consulted Japanese pianist Shinya Kiyozuka [ja] to create a special arrangement for him, stating: "I thought that if I used an original piano version by Kiyozuka, who gave me the energy to live and skate when I was going through a very hard time last season, I would be able to skate more comfortably." He wished for a piece that was overflowing with passion, but also carried some sorrow and delicacy. Hanyu had already skated to Kiyozuka's piano version of the Japanese song "[[Haru yo, koi]([Haru_yo,_koi "wikilink") [ja]] Error: : transliteration text not Latin script (pos 91) (help)" in various exhibition galas since 2018 and performed with him in a live show collaboration at the 2018 Fantasy on Ice. The foundation of the choreography was laid by Jeffrey Buttle. In order to improve the program regarding different aspects such as the storyline and expression, Hanyu also consulted his coaches Brian Orser, Tracy Wilson, and choreographer Shae-Lynn Bourne. The program reflects his memories and feelings from the time when he did not make any progress with the quadruple Axel, how he tried to push forward, and eventually caught something in his grasp as shown by the final pose. Hanyu noted that regarding the base value of the technical elements, it might not have been the most difficult program he was capable of, but he had increased the complexity of transitions between the elements, stating: "There is only about one crossover before each jump, there are hardly any crossovers in this program. I certainly want these aspects to be seen. In terms of expression, it might not be as refined as my signature programs like 'Ballade No. 1' or 'Seimei' yet, but it is a program with a specific story and feelings woven into the music. I'd like to make it a program where everything can be seen, not only the jumps." The costume for the program was created by Satomi Ito. Hanyu requested a design using cool colors and a choker-like detail in blue. Ito suggested a style that resembled the costume design of Hanyu's previous short program to "Otoñal" by Raúl Di Blasio from the 2019–20 season, and added some golden feathers at its finalization. She described the costume as a "phoenix veiled in blue flames" that "only Hanyu can pull off." #### Free skate program: Heaven and Earth (天と地と) For the free skate, Hanyu decided to reuse the program Heaven and Earth (天と地と, Ten to Chi to) from the previous season and incorporate the quadruple Axel as the first jump. The music is a medley of the opening themes of the two taiga dramas Ten to Chi to (1969) and Shin Heike Monogatari (1972), composed by Isao Tomita. At the 2020–21 Japan Championships, Hanyu performed a clean free skate and set a new unofficial national record score with the program. In his opinion, a performance with clean and seamless jump execution is essential to convey the meaning and expression of the program. Heaven and Earth was choreographed remotely by Shae-Lynn Bourne, who arranged online meetings and exchanged multiple video mails with Hanyu. Due to the lack of presence-based coaching during the corona pandemic, Hanyu had to work out many parts of the choreography himself. At their first meeting, he already had a concept of the program in mind, including the placement of the technical elements with the required space and breathing. In the program, Hanyu portrayed Uesugi Kenshin, a daimyō from the Sengoku period of Japan in the 16th century, who was said to be the most powerful warlord of his time and known for his belief in the Buddhist war god Bishamonten. However, Kenshin was aware of the hardships and sacrifices attached to it and eventually chose to become a monk. Hanyu's motivation behind the program choice was his strong resonance with Kenshin's situation as well as his values and approach towards battle. In an interview with Sports Hochi in August 2022, Hanyu named Heaven and Earth as the favorite among his past figure skating programs. The first part depicts the fourth battle of Kawanakajima in 1561 between the two daimyōs Uesugi Kenshin and his rival Takeda Shingen. Both aimed to take control over a plain in the Shinano Province, located in the area of today's Nagano city, where Hanyu debuted the program in competition. The step sequence is a visualization of Kenshin's sword dance during the single combat with Shingen, which Bourne described as a "battle of beauty". The second part of the program shows Kenshin's reflection on the battle and his life until that point, including his inner conflict of no longer wanting to fight, but being forced to continue in order to protect his loved ones. The program concludes with Kenshin entering priesthood and reaching a state of enlightenment, which is illustrated by the final spins and the ending pose. For Bourne, that pose is a "true expression of 'heaven and earth'—the feet are firmly attached to the earth (represented by the rink), and the hands are stretched out to the sky. It is an image of ascending towards the light of heaven." The original Japanese title of the program literally translates to 'heaven and earth and', which indicates the existence of a third element. In Taoism, heaven (天) and earth (地) are thought to maintain the two poles of the Three Realms of reality, with the middle realm occupied by humanity (人), which Hanyu associated with people and, as an example, himself: "For me, it is 'ten to chi no hito' (a man between heaven and earth). My arm is the transition between where I am, and the sky above, and the earth below." For the music editing, Hanyu again consulted Keiichi Yano, who created a total of 18 versions in a span of two and a half weeks. For Hanyu, it was important to fully utilize the sound of the Japanese lute biwa to structure the program and underline both Kenshin's determination to fight and his reflection on the battle. Hanyu also asked Yano to add the sound of the half-tube zither koto to make the program "even more 'Japonesque'". The costume was designed by Satomi Ito, who took the family crest of the Uesugi clan as inspiration for the costume details, including the golden sparrows on the back of the top. Hanyu asked Ito to base the costume design on the image of the traditional Japanese pantskirt hakama in a color scheme of greenish-blue. However, the hakama was difficult to realize as a light figure skating costume, so Ito used the obi, a belt usually worn with a kimono or keikogi, to reproduce the visual appearance of a hakama. For the Olympic season, the color of the obi was changed from blue to black. ### 2021 pre-Olympic events Approaching the 2021–22 Olympic season, Hanyu was assigned to the Grand Prix series and scheduled for the NHK Trophy and Rostelecom Cup. However, on November 4, 2021, the Japan Skating Federation announced that Hanyu had withdrawn from the NHK Trophy after injuring his right ankle ligament during a fall in practice. On November 17, the JSF also confirmed his withdrawal from the Rostelecom Cup. Hanyu later revealed that the injury had occurred during one of his free skate run-throughs; when setting up for a quad Salchow consecutively after a quad Axel attempt, the edge of his blade did not glide properly and got stuck in the ice, resulting in the fall. He explained that he had some maintenance issues and just sharpened his blades prior to the accident. Shortly after the injury, he had been forced off practice for one month, suffering from a fever due to esophagitis. In December, Hanyu returned to competition at the 2021–22 Japan Championships. In his first practice session, he attempted multiple quad Axels, one of them with a two-footed landing and slightly short on rotation. According to him, the focus was on maintaining a solid axis during the jump rather than maximizing the torque. The next day, Hanyu debuted his short program Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso with a clean performance, receiving maximum grades of execution for the step sequence and the final spin combination as well as a perfect 10.00 for the interpretation component. He took the lead after the short program with a new event record of 111.31 points, only half a point shy of his own world record set at the 2020 Four Continents Championships. In the free skate, Hanyu attempted the quadruple Axel in competition for the first time, but it was landed on two feet and marked as downgraded by the technical panel, lacking more than a half revolution at the landing. However, he managed to execute the rest of the program flawlessly, earning 211.05 points for his performance. With another event record of 322.36 points in the combined total, he won his sixth gold medal at the Japan Figure Skating Championships, tying Takeshi Honda's record of most national titles in the last 50 years. He finished ahead of Shoma Uno (silver) and Yuma Kagiyama (bronze), who both qualified alongside Hanyu for the 2022 Winter Olympics and World Championships. In an interview after the competition, Hanyu shared his thoughts on winning three Olympic gold medals in a row for the first time: > The Olympics to me was a dream through to PyeongChang. I won gold there and in Sochi; that's the dream I had as a child and was my lifelong goal. Honestly, I wasn't thinking about a three-peat. But I recognize the position I'm in, the challenge I'm taking on, and seeing all these athletes working so hard towards the Olympics ... I'm the only figure skater who has the opportunity to win a third straight gold medal. This might not be the dream I've always had, but I want to show a renewed strength—one different from last time and the time before that. ### 2022 Winter Olympics At the 2022 Winter Olympics, Hanyu was scheduled for the men's singles event as his first international competition of the season. His arrival was highly anticipated, especially among his large fanbase in China, and closely followed by the media. On February 6, two days prior to the competition, he arrived at Beijing airport being surrounded by officials in protective gear, who received criticism for the lack of social distancing amidst the corona pandemic. In the short program, Hanyu performed Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso for the first time in international competition. However, he missed his opening quadruple Salchow jump due to his blade getting caught in a hole in the ice. The costly error put him in eighth place with 95.15 points, his lowest short program placement since 2013 and also his lowest score in the segment since the 2019 World Championships. In the free skate, he fell on his two opening jumps, a quadruple Axel and a quad Salchow. After the two mistakes, he delivered a clean performance, placing third in the free skate and fourth overall with a total score of 283.21 points, behind Nathan Chen (gold) and his Japanese compatriots Yuma Kagiyama (silver) and Shoma Uno (bronze). It was Hanyu's first off-podium finish since the 2014 NHK Trophy. His quad Axel attempt received the jump's base value before being reduced for under-rotation, making it the closest attempt in competition until then. In September 2022, American Ilia Malinin successfully landed the first ratified one at the U.S. International Classic, who cited Hanyu as his inspiration to attempt the jump. Upon the conclusion of the men's singles event, it was revealed that Hanyu had re-injured his right ankle in practice the day before the free skate and competed on painkillers. On February 14, he shared more details about his injury, stating that the sprain had been worse than initially assumed, and that if it had been a competition other than the Olympics, he might have withdrawn as his doctor had suggested him to rest his ankle for ten days. However, Hanyu decided to participate in the exhibition gala and also performed a medley of past programs to the media and staff members at the practice rink. Asked about his future, he did not rule out the possibility to return to the Olympic Games, stating: "If you ask me whether these were my last Games, I don't know. The Olympics is a special place, one of a kind. It's a competition, a challenge, that you want to take on even if you're hurt. There's no other place like that for a figure skater. There is a part of me that does want to skate here again." ### 2022 post-Olympic events and after season honors On March 1, 2022, the Japan Skating Federation announced Hanyu's withdrawal from the World Championships, stating that the injury he had suffered at the Beijing Olympics was not fully healed. From May to June, he joined the 2022 Fantasy on Ice tour as one of the lead cast members to four prefectures across Japan. The tour was live-screened in 90 movie theaters nationwide as well as six theaters in Taiwan. During the tour, he jumped multiple quadruple toe loops, indicating that his recovery had been going smoothly. On July 19, Hanyu had called a press conference, where he announced his decision to "step away" from competitive figure skating at amateur level and turn professional, stating that "he had achieved everything he could achieve" and would no longer "seek those kinds of evaluations." He stressed his intention to continue pursuing his "ideal skating" and dream of completing the quadruple Axel as a professional athlete at an ice show or other non-competitive setting. Despite being unable to provide details on his future plans, he expressed his hope "to draw even people who don't normally come out to watch skating". The press conference was live-streamed nationally and covered by major national and international media. On July 21, Hanyu released a message through the Japan Skating Federation, and his profile was removed from the federation's list of advanced skaters as requested by ANA, his affiliated organization at that time. On October 11, Hanyu was announced to be among the recipients of the 70th Kikuchi Kan Prize, a prestigious award for outstanding achievements in cultural activities, named after Japanese author Kikuchi Kan. Hanyu was selected for his accomplishments in the men's singles discipline, including his win of all major international competitions and back-to-back Olympic titles, as well as his inspirational attitude to continue challenging the quadruple Axel. He is the second figure skater to receive the award after Mao Asada in 2017. The award ceremony was held on December 2 in Tokyo. In a video message, Hanyu expressed his gratitude and confessed: "Most of my life was a path to dreams, a series of hopes and despairs. However, I want to make every choice meaningful. Even if I fail or get injured by my choices, I want them to have a meaning." ## Olympic program challenges Hanyu started off his professional skating career by challenging two of his past Olympic programs. On August 10, he shared a two-hour long practice livestream on his newly launched YouTube channel. In the course of that practice session, he attempted his free skate program Seimei from the 2018 Winter Olympics three times and skated a clean performance at last attempt featuring four quadruple jumps. At the end of the session, he remarked: "My goal this time was to skate a clean performance of Seimei with the same technical layout as at the Olympics in Pyeongchang. Well, I had such a strong will to prove that I was better than that time." The practice stream was viewed live by more than 100,000 people and reached a total of one million views in 8.5 hours. In the 45th edition of the annual charity program 24-hour TV "Love Saves the Earth" [ja], broadcast by Nippon TV on August 27, Hanyu challenged his short program Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso from the 2022 Winter Olympics to overcome the negative memories of the event. This time, he succeeded at the opening quad Salchow and performed a clean program with two quadruple jumps and a triple Axel. In a subsequent interview he expressed his feelings about the performance: "I made a mistake at the Olympics—in a way, it was a trauma. That's why I thought, I'd like to challenge it again. I feel that, for the first time, I was able to skate this program to perfection. It was one of those programs that I was too scared to take a step on. But finally, I feel that I was able to get over it and move forward again. I hope that, even if it is only for a second, it will be an opportunity for everyone to move forward." On February 26, 2023, he again challenged the program in his solo ice show Gift at Tokyo Dome in front of a record audience of 35,000 spectators. He recreated the setting of the Beijing Olympics with a preceding six-minute warm-up session and skated another clean performance with the same technical content, including a successful opening quad Salchow. ## Legacy Hanyu's achievements at the Olympics earned him spots in numerous prestigious lists and international athlete rankings, including Forbes' 30 Under 30 Asia (2018), ESPN's World Fame 100 and The Dominant 20, and Marca's 100 Best Male Sportsmen of the 21st Century. In 2024, Hanyu was featured in ESPN's top 25 selection of the greatest Olympic athletes of the 21st century, being the highest-ranked figure skater in the list (10th place) ahead of three-time Olympic ice dance champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir (11th place). In 2022, Hanyu was the sixth most-searched athlete on Google Search worldwide behind Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams (all tennis), Manti Te'o (American football), and Shaun White (snowboard). Various news outlets and magazines such as Nikkei Asia and International Figure Skating noted that Hanyu's exit from the competitive circuit marks the "end of an era". Juliet Macur of The New York Times remarked that "we may never see another skater like Yuzuru Hanyu". Numerous sports figures from and outside figure skating reacted to Hanyu's announcement with gratitude and praise, including Japanese baseballer Shohei Ohtani, gymnast Kōhei Uchimura, and tennis player Naomi Osaka. Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, sent a personal message to Hanyu through the IOC's official media account on Twitter: "Congratulations on an outstanding Olympic career. You are a true Olympic champion. Good luck for the next steps in your skating career. We will keep following you and look forward to seeing you again." ## Detailed results ## See also - List of Olympic medalists in figure skating - Figure skating at the 2014 Winter Olympics (men's singles) - Figure skating at the 2018 Winter Olympics (men's singles) - Figure skating at the 2022 Winter Olympics (men's singles)

The Shape of Things to Come (Lost)

"The Shape of Things to Come" is the 81st episode of the American Broadcasting Company's Lost and is the ninth episode of the fourth season. It aired on April 24, 2008 on ABC in the United States and on CTV in Canada. The episode was written by co-executive producer Drew Goddard and co-producer Brian K. Vaughan in late February 2008 and directed by executive producer Jack Bender in mid-March. The narrative centers on Ben Linus (played by Michael Emerson) as he and the Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 crash survivors at the Barracks come under attack in December 2004, while flashforwards to late 2005 show him recruiting Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) as a hitman and confronting his enemy Charles Widmore (Alan Dale). "The Shape of Things to Come" is one of a few Lost episodes to contain footage filmed outside Hawaii. The episode aired as the first of the second batch of fourth-season episodes that were originally planned to air uninterrupted by a hiatus with the rest of the season; however, the 100-day 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike paused production and caused the writers to condense the second half of the season, which aired after a four-week break. "The Shape of Things to Come" received positive critical reviews, and the original broadcast in the United States was viewed by 14 million people. Much praise was directed at Emerson's acting skills, particularly in his reaction to the execution of his character's daughter Alex (Tania Raymonde). His performance in this specific episode received a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards; the episode was also nominated in the category of Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series. ## Plot The episode is set on December 27, 2004, the survivors' 97th day on the island. At the beach camp, the corpse of Dr. Ray (Marc Vann), the freighter Kahana's doctor, washes ashore. Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) calls the freighter and asks what happened to Ray via morse code. Daniel lies about the response, saying that rescue helicopters will be sent soon; however, Bernard Nadler (Sam Anderson) calls him out on this and correctly interprets the freighter's message: "What are you talking about? The doctor is fine." Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox), who suffers from stomach pains throughout the day, forces Daniel to reveal that it was never their intention to rescue the survivors. Meanwhile, Alex is captured by Martin Keamy (Kevin Durand) and others from the freighter. As they take her to the Barracks, she sets off an alarm heralding the arrival of Ben's enemies. Ben, John Locke (Terry O'Quinn), and Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia) fortify Ben's house, while James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway) goes to retrieve the other survivors in the Barracks. He is partially successful, as he saves Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin) from her exploded and burning house, but three survivors (portrayed by extras) are shot to death by the mercenaries. Keamy finds and frees Miles Straume (Ken Leung), giving him a walkie-talkie to take to Ben. Ben communicates with Keamy, who threatens to kill Alex if Ben does not surrender. Ben attempts to negotiate and is shocked when Keamy executes Alex. Locking himself in the house's secret room, Ben enters a hidden chamber. He re-emerges shortly after covered in soot, and the smoke monster attacks Keamy's henchmen. The survivors flee for the forest, with Ben lingering briefly to grieve over Alex's body. Afterward, Ben and Locke depart to locate Jacob for further instructions. Sawyer, Hurley, Claire and Aaron turn to return to the beach with Miles, but Locke holds them at gunpoint, successfully demanding that Hurley goes with him (as he has found Jacob's cabin before). Flashforwards show Ben on three continents in autumn 2005. Ben is startled when he wakes up in the Sahara Desert wearing a winter jacket and with a large cut on his upper arm; challenged by two armed locals, he kills one of them (Nick Hermz) and knocks the other (Sammy Sheik) unconscious and travels on horseback to Tozeur, Tunisia on October 24, 2005. Ben journeys to Tikrit, Iraq, where the funeral of Sayid's wife Nadia Jazeem (Andrea Gabriel) is taking place. Ben tells Sayid that Widmore ordered Ishmael Bakir (Faran Tahir) to kill Nadia. Ben lures Bakir into a trap to be killed by Sayid, who shoots Bakir repeatedly. Ben recruits Sayid to become Ben's assassin, and leaves for London, where he breaks into Widmore's penthouse; although Ben cannot kill Widmore, he states that he is going to kill Widmore's daughter Penelope (Sonya Walger) in retribution for Alex's death. In their conversation, Widmore claims that the island is his and that he will take it back from Ben one day. ## Production The Writers Guild of America went on strike on November 4, 2007, by which time only eight of the planned sixteen episodes of Lost's fourth season had been written. These episodes aired from January to March 2008. After the strike ended on February 12, 2008, the writers found that there was only enough time to produce five episodes, although the fifth episode would later be expanded to two episodes—and they proceeded to compress most of the storylines of the planned eight episodes into six, with some carrying over into the fifth season. Executive producer/head writer Damon Lindelof stated that "we are going to execute our full story plan for season four. This simply requires a shift from high-octane storytelling to superhigh-octane storytelling. It requires no cramming, only a slightly heavier foot on the gas pedal ... so, hold on to your hats. Those of you waiting for the long-anticipated and Hurley Ping-Pong tournament, however, will be very disappointed." The writers expressed interest to air the eighth episode with the second batch of episodes, but ABC did not comply and "The Shape of Things to Come" served as the mid-season premiere. The writers realized some advantages to the strike: they were able to use actors whose shows had been canceled during the strike, and they were able to respond to confusion from the audience. They would later even conclude that the season was better as a result of the interruption, as they were able to discard "languid, contemplative material" and felt "recharged [with] a real energy to attack [the] last six episodes". The first three seasons were broadcast on Wednesdays in the United States and Canada; the pre-strike fourth-season episodes aired on Thursdays at 9:00 p.m., a time slot normally occupied by Grey's Anatomy. "The Shape of Things to Come" and the following three episodes were broadcast on Thursdays at 10:00 p.m., after Grey's Anatomy. "The Shape of Things to Come" was written alongside "Something Nice Back Home" and "Cabin Fever" in February and March 2008. Its title is derived from the 1933 science fiction novel of the same name by H.G. Wells. Co-executive producer/writer Drew Goddard called the episode "maybe my favorite thing I've done on Lost, and I've been lucky with all the episodes I've gotten so far". Shooting began on March 10 and continued through March 25, alongside filming of "Something Nice Back Home". The scene in which Ben confronts Widmore was actually filmed in London, because actor Alan Dale was unable to fly to Hawaii as he had been appearing in a production of the play Spamalot. Several crew members and Michael Emerson flew to London to film the scene. A scene in which Claire has a prophetic vision was produced; however, it was cut due to runtime constraints. A shoot-out early in the episode sees the end of the three background survivors who joined Locke in his trip to the Barracks in the early fourth season. One of them, Doug, was played by Sean Douglas Hoban, who received credit as a co-star for the first time in his run on the show, having been cast in the pilot as "Passenger \#4". Hoban later also acted as a stunt double for Dominic Monaghan, who plays Charlie Pace, a major character in the first three seasons. Hoban has one line in "The Shape of Things to Come", and he had to audition for it against the other background actors. The episode's flashforwards commence with Ben waking up alarmed in the Sahara with a wounded right arm and vapor rising from him. The Dharma Initiative parka that he wears was codenamed "Dharka" by the writers. A couple of Easter eggs are present in this scene: Ben's parka has a name tag that indicates that it was formerly owned by Edgar Halliwax (François Chau) and it displays the first appearance of the logo for a Dharma station called the "Orchid" that would not be seen until the episode titled "There's No Place Like Home". Another Easter egg is glimpsed in the next scene, when Ben reveals his forged Canadian passport previously seen in "The Economist" for his alias Dean Moriarty, which is also the name of the central character in Jack Kerouac's 1951 novel On the Road. Among the most frequent questions that the writers are asked is whether they have planned out future storylines, so the writers try to allude to future plot points, such as with the Dharka scene, that they can later call on as proof that they do know where the story is headed. Director Jack Bender described the scene, which was filmed in a Hawaiian rock quarry, as especially hard to shoot because the actors had to ride horses and use guns, the crew had to relocate due to rocks present that were unsuitable for the scene, and Bender walked head-first into a crane. Emerson stated that the set is "definitely a no-glamour zone ... I thought we would ease into things. Instead, I get this all-Ben extravaganza: combat, riding horses, foreign languages. And piano playing\! All waaaay outside my comfort zone. How can you work two weeks and feel like you need a vacation already?" ## Reception "The Shape of Things to Come" was viewed in the United States live or within five hours of broadcast by 12.075 million people, ranking Lost as the fourteenth most watched program of the week. A total in the United States of 14.067 million people watched the episode live or within seven days; this number was factored into the season's average. This was an improvement over the previous Lost episode that had aired six weeks earlier. Lost also improved its Canadian ratings with 1.443 million viewers. In Australia, "The Shape of Things to Come" was watched by only 683,000 viewers, but Lost was nominated in the same week for two Sun-Herald Bogie Awards—a parody of the Australian Logie Awards—in the categories of "Most Underrated" series and "Most Jerked Around by the Networks". "The Shape of Things to Come" received critical acclaim. Karla Peterson of The San Diego Union-Tribune gave "The Shape of Things to Come" an "A+." Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly called "The Shape of Things to Come" "one of those deliciously dense episodes in which the nourishment of revelation is mixed with huge chunks of sugary intrigue" and speculated that the scene in which Alex is executed will be "sitting very high on this ranking of all-time pivotal Lost moments" by the series' May 2010 end. Before the season finale aired, Jensen ranked this as the second best moment of the season and put the scene in which the monster attacks the mercenaries in ninth place. Dan Kois and Lane Brown of New York magazine thought that this "episode didn't exactly feel like the usual moderately paced, secret-revealing drama Lost usually is; it felt like an action movie ... it was like watching Die Hard on an island". Chris Carabott of IGN gave the episode a 9.3/10, concluding that "if 'The Shape of Things to Come' is any indication of the level of quality that [the audience] should expect from here on out then we are in for some incredible storytelling" and "Alex's death will probably be remembered as one of the more pivotal scenes in the entire series [because] it is such a phenomenally shot, edited and acted moment ... it would be incredibly hard not to feel for [Ben] here." Upon grading the best episodes of the first five seasons, the episode ranked second, beating episodes like "Through the Looking Glass" and the pilot and losing to "The Constant." Erin Martell of AOL's TV Squad summed up "The Shape of Things to Come" as "a brilliant episode ... [with] tons of action, several big revelations, and more questions to ponder". Don Williams of BuddyTV decided that the episode was "worth waiting five weeks for" and "so jam packed that I need to give my brain time to rest". Williams's colleague Oscar Dahl ranked the scene in which Alex is killed as the fifth best moment of the season, noting that "it was perfectly paced ... and provided a huge shock ... and some of the best acting you'll ever see". Jay Glatfelter of The Huffington Post wrote that "'The Shape of Things to Come' was the perfect episode to get everyone back into the swing of Lost. It wasn't a mindfuck à la 'The Constant'. It was an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride, which to me matched the 'Pilot''s bombastic grandeur". Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger wrote that the episode "was overflowing with manna from post-strike heaven: lots of action, lots of intrigue [and] the odd answer or three"; however, he criticized the deaths of the three 815 survivors played by extras and survival of main characters, saying that "that sequence with Sawyer dodging bullets was supposed to be tense and frightening; instead, it was funny". Kristin Dos Santos of E\! agreed with Sepinwall's latter assessment. Jamie Poniewozik of Time worried about the show's direction in which Widmore is suddenly the antagonist and Ben travels the globe to seek revenge. He said that it "looks a little too much like Alias"; Poniewozik enjoyed the island drama. Daniel of TMZ called "The Shape of Things to Come" "another solid episode of Lost", grading it as a "B" and claiming that "I enjoyed it the whole way through, even if it never gave me that 'OH MY GOD\!\!\!\!' moment, though I loved the Alex execution scene." Before the episode began shooting, Michael Emerson had already decided to submit his performance in this episode for consideration in the Supporting Actor in a Drama Series category of the Primetime Emmy Awards because of the script's strength. He received his second consecutive Emmy nomination for this role; however, he lost to Željko Ivanek of the FX series Damages. Emerson won the next year for the episode "Dead Is Dead". Kevin Thompson of The Palm Beach Post wrote that "with those big ol' eyes of his, [Emerson] could always say more with a lengthy stare than he could with twenty pages of dialogue.... [He has], once again, proved why he has become Lost's star as well as its heart and soul.... an Emmy should belong to [him]." Jennifer Godwin of E\! wrote that "no one has ever done better work humanizing a supervillain." Among those who also praised Emerson's performance as Ben were Robert Bianco of USA Today, Matt Roush of TV Guide, Ben Rawson-Jones of Digital Spy, who gave the episode a perfect rating of five stars, John Kubicek of BuddyTV and aforementioned critics from The Star-Ledger, The San Diego Union-Tribune, Time, Entertainment Weekly, IGN and TV Squad.

Toronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory

Observatory in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The Toronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory is a historical observatory located on the grounds of the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The original building was constructed in 1840 as part of a worldwide research project run by Edward Sabine to determine the cause of fluctuations in magnetic declination. Measurements from the Toronto site demonstrated that sunspots were responsible for this effect on Earth's magnetic field. When this project concluded in 1853, the observatory was greatly expanded by the Canadian government and served as the country's primary meteorological station and official timekeeper for over fifty years. The observatory is considered the birthplace of Canadian astronomy. ## Sabine's study Compasses tended to "wander" from north when measurements were taken at different locations or even at a single location over a period of time. The astronomer Edmund Halley noted this and the problems it would cause for navigation in 1701. It was also believed that whatever was causing this effect might be causing changes in the weather, and that studying magnetic variations might lead to better weather prediction. In 1833 the British Association for the Advancement of Science commissioned a series of magnetic measurements across the United Kingdom. Under the direction of Major Edward Sabine of the Royal Artillery, a multi-year measuring project began, with the results to be published in 1838. As the measurements were being made a number of proposals were put forth to expand the program worldwide. In 1836 the German explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt wrote to Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, then President of the Royal Society, stating that a formal program was important to a nation with dominions spread across the globe. At the seventh meeting of the British Association in Liverpool in 1837, Sabine declared that "the magnetism of the earth cannot be counted less than one of the most important branches of the physical history of the planet we inhabit" and mapping its variations would be "regarded by our contemporaries and by posterity as a fitting enterprise of a maritime people; and a worthy achievement of a nation which has ever sought to rank foremost in every arduous undertaking". In 1837, the British Government funded the installation of a magnetic observatory at Greenwich. The Association continued to press for the construction of similar observatories around the world, and in 1838 their suggestions were accepted by the Government and funds were provided. In 1839 the British Government and the Royal Society prepared four expeditions to build magnetic observation stations in Cape Town; St. Helena; Hobart, Tasmania and (eventually) Toronto, Ontario. Teams of Royal Artillery officers were sent out to take the measurements. The team assigned to Canada originally planned to build their observatory on Saint Helen's Island off Montreal, but the local rocks proved to have a high magnetic influence, and the decision was made to move to Toronto instead. The team arrived in 1839, and set up camp at Fort York in a disused barracks while construction started on new buildings. The observatory was given 10 acres (4.0 ha) of land to the west of King's College; the Ontario Legislature now occupies the area on which the college was located. The observatory, officially "Her Majesty's Magnetical and Meteorological Observatory at Toronto", was completed the following year. It consisted of two log buildings, one for the magnetic instruments and the other a smaller semi-buried building nearby for "experimental determinations". The north end of the main building was connected to a small conical dome which contained a theodolite used to make astronomical measurements for the accurate determination of the local time. The buildings were constructed with as little metal as possible; when metal was required, non-magnetic materials such as brass or copper were used. A small barracks was built nearby to house the crew. Using the measurements from the Toronto and Hobart sites, Sabine noticed both short-term fluctuations in magnetic declination over a period of hours, and longer-term variations over months. He quickly concluded that the short term variations were due to the day/night cycle, while the longer term ones were due to the number of visible sunspots. He published two introductory papers on the topic in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The first, in 1851, was a collection of early measurements; the second in 1852 correlated with Heinrich Schwabe's sunspot measurements, which had been made widely available in Alexander von Humboldt's Cosmos, also published in 1851. With further data collected from the Toronto site, Sabine was able to demonstrate conclusively that the eleven-year sunspot cycle caused a similarly periodic variation in the Earth's magnetic field. He presented a third and conclusive paper on the topic in 1856, "On Periodical Laws Discoverable in the Mean Effects of the Larger Magnetic Disturbances", in which he singled out the Toronto site for particular praise. Sir John Henry Lefroy, a pioneer in the study of terrestrial magnetism served as director of the magnetic observatory from 1842 to 1853; In 1960, the Ontario Heritage Foundation, Ministry of Citizenship and Culture erected a Provincial Military Plaque in his honour on the University of Toronto campus. ## Meteorological service In 1853 the Royal Society's project was concluded, and the observatory was set to be abandoned. After a lengthy debate, the fledgling colonial government decided to take over its operation. Rather than disappearing like its three counterparts, the Toronto observatory was upgraded, and its mission was expanded as it became a meteorological station (see Meteorological Service of Canada) under the direction of the Ministry of Marine and Fisheries. During the expansion, the original buildings were replaced with a permanent structure. The new building was designed in 1853 by local architect Frederick Cumberland, who was also working on the design of University College, which was being built just north of the Observatory to replace King's College. The new observatory design called for a stone building, with an attached tower containing the theodolite. The new building was completed in 1855, and stood directly opposite the entrance of today's Convocation Hall. During its time as a meteorological station, the observatory collected reports from 312 observation stations in Canada and another 36 in the United States. Each station was equipped with a "Mercurial Barometer, two Thermometers (a maximum and a minimum Thermometer), an Anemometer to measure the velocity of the wind, a Wind Vane and a Rain Gauge". Reports were sent in coded form to the Observatory at 8 am and 8 pm every day, Eastern Standard Time (then known as "75th meridian time"), and used to produce a chart predicting the weather for the following 36 hours. These predictions were then telegraphed across the country, and charts were distributed to newspapers and the Board of Trade, where they could be viewed by the public. With the installation of telephones, the Observatory also offered weather reports on demand, which was an important service to fruit vendors, who used the reports to plan shipping. Among its other uses, in 1880, measurements from the site were used as part of the effort to develop standard time. The observatory remained the official timekeeper for Canada until 1905, when that responsibility was transferred to Ottawa's Dominion Observatory. At exactly 11:55 am the clocks in Toronto fire halls were rung by an electrical signal from the Observatory. In 1881 the observatory's director, Charles Carpmeal, suggested adding a high-quality telescope to the observatory. He felt that direct solar observations would lead to a better understanding of sunspot effects on weather (as late as 1910 the observatory's then-director, Robert Frederic Stupart, noted that "sun spots have more to do with our weather conditions than have the rings around the moon."). Coincidentally, the Canadian government (having formed in 1867) was interested in taking part in the major international effort to accurately record the December 1882 Transit of Venus. Funds were provided for the purchase of a 6-inch (150 mm) refracting telescope from T. Cooke & Sons. The dome was originally designed to mount a small transit, and the lengthy telescope, over 2 metres long, had a limited field of view though the dome's opening. A large stone pillar was constructed inside the tower, raising the telescope to bring it closer to the dome and improve its field of view. Unfortunately, the new telescope was unable to take part in the transit measurements due to bad weather, and missed the 1895 Transit of Mercury for the same reason. ## Relocation By the 1890s, the observatory had become crowded by the rapidly growing university. Electrification of the tramways along College Street just to the south, and the large quantities of metal used in the modern buildings surrounding the site threw off the instruments. A new magnetic observatory opened in 1898 in Agincourt, at that time largely empty fields, (found on later maps on the north end of George Forfar farm east of Midland Avenue near Highway 401 or where Health Canada Protection Branch building resides today) leaving the downtown campus location with its meteorological and solar observation duties. By 1907, new university buildings completely surrounded the observatory; dust from the construction clogged meteorological instruments, and at night electric lighting made astronomical work impossible. The Meteorological Office decided to abandon the site and move to a new building at the north end of campus at 315 Bloor Street West, trading the original Observatory to the University in exchange for the new parcel of land. There was some discussion regarding what to do with the Cooke telescope, since the Meteorological Office had little use for this purely astronomical instrument. No other use was immediately forthcoming, and the telescope moved along with the Meteorological Office to their new Bloor Street Observatory. The university assumed ownership of the now-disused observatory building and was originally going to abandon it. Louis Beaufort Stewart, a lecturer in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, campaigned for it to be saved for the Department of Surveying and Geodesy. He eventually arranged for the building to be re-constructed on a more suitable site. Demolition work was carried out in 1907: the stones were simply left in place over the winter, and were used the following year to construct a re-arranged building just east of the main University College building (south of Hart House). In 1930 the Meteorological Office no longer used the Cooke telescope, and agreed to donate it to the university if they would handle its removal. Both the telescope and the observatory dome were moved to the observatory building. The telescope moved once again in 1952 to the David Dunlap Observatory north of the city, and in 1984 it was donated to the Canada Science and Technology Museum. The Department of Surveying and Geodesy used the observatory until the 1950s. Since then the office areas have been used for a variety of purposes, including a police substation and a telephone switchboard. Renamed as the Louis Beaufort Stewart Observatory, the building was handed over to the Students' Administrative Council (now University of Toronto Students' Union) in 1953, which has used the building since then. The dome, now unused, receives a yearly multi-colour paint job by engineering students. ## Heritage The property is listed on the City of Toronto's Heritage Register since 1973. The listing notes it was opened as an observatory in 1857, designed by Cumberland and Storm.

Plesiorycteropus

An extinct genus of eutherian mammals from Madagascar

Plesiorycteropus, also known as the bibymalagasy or Malagasy aardvark, is a recently extinct genus of mammals from Madagascar. Upon its description in 1895, it was classified with the aardvark, but more recent molecular evidence instead suggests that it is most closely related to the tenrecs (a group extant on the island). Two species are currently recognized, the larger P. madagascariensis and the smaller P. germainepetterae. They probably overlapped in distribution, as subfossil remains of both species have been found in the same site. Knowledge of the skeletal anatomy is limited, as only limb, partial pelvis, and skull bones have been recovered to date. Plesiorycteropus was probably a digging animal that fed on insects such as termites and ants. It also shows adaptations for climbing and sitting. Estimates of its mass range from 6 to 18 kilograms (13 to 40 lb). When and why it became extinct remains unknown. One bone has been radiocarbon dated to 200 BCE; forest destruction by humans may have contributed to its extinction. ## Taxonomy ### Identification and species French naturalist Henri Filhol first described Plesiorycteropus madagascariensis in 1895 on the basis of a partial skull found at the cave of Belo. His description was vague even by 19th-century standards, but he placed the animal close to the aardvark (Orycteropus). The generic name combines Ancient Greek plesio- "near" with Orycteropus, the genus of the aardvark, and the specific name refers to Madagascar. Charles Lamberton, who had access to a larger sample for his 1946 review of the genus, noted substantial variation, but did not attempt to differentiate multiple species. In 1994, Ross MacPhee again reviewed Plesiorycteropus and was able to separate two species, the larger P. madagascariensis and a new, smaller species that he named Plesiorycteropus germainepetterae after scientist Germaine Petter. The two species differ in a number of morphological characters in addition to size. Remains of Plesiorycteropus have been misidentified as rodents and primates. Charles Immanuel Forsyth Major described Myoryctes rapeto in 1908 as a "giant subfossil rat" on the basis of two innominate bones (pelvic bones). The generic name was replaced by Majoria in 1915, because Myoryctes was preoccupied by the name of a nematode worm. However, according to MacPhee, innominates of Majoria are identical to those assigned to Plesiorycteropus. Guillaume Grandidier assigned a well-preserved femur (upper leg bone) to a gigantic relative of the living votsovotsa (Hypogeomys antimena), a large rodent, which he described as Hypogeomys boulei. Lamberton identified this femur as Plesiorycteropus and MacPhee concurred. Remains of both Majoria rapeto and Hypogeomys boulei fall at the upper end of the size range of the genus, indicating that they are referable to P. madagascariensis. Another Plesiorycteropus innominate was mistakenly assigned to Daubentonia robusta, the extinct giant aye-aye, and other material has been misidentified as of a dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus). ### Relationships Filhol had classified Plesiorycteropus as close to the aardvark on the basis of morphological similarities. In his 1946 review, Charles Lamberton was unable to provide a definitive allocation, confused by the various similarities he saw with aardvarks, pangolins, armadillos, and anteaters. He believed it was most likely a primitive, isolated member of "Edentata", a group in which he included aardvarks, pangolins, and Xenarthra (sloths, armadillos, and anteaters). He rejected some alternatives, such as a close affinity to aardvarks or the possibility that the material assigned to Plesiorycteropus did not in fact represent a single animal. Bryan Patterson, who revised tubulidentates (the order of which the aardvark is the only living representative) in the 1970s, accepted Plesiorycteropus as a member of the group, dismissing many similarities with pangolins and other animals as convergent. However, he placed it as the only member of its own subfamily Plesiorycteropodinae in view of its differences from other tubulidentates (subfamily Orycteropodinae), and hypothesized that it arrived on Madagascar in the Eocene, at the same time as the lemurs. Johannes Thewissen, who critiqued some aspects of Patterson's classification in 1985, also accepted Plesiorycteropus as a tubulidentate without comment. Reviewing Patterson's and Thewissen's contributions in 1994, Ross MacPhee found little support for the classification of Plesiorycteropus as a tubulidentate in their data. MacPhee used a cladistic analysis of eutherians to ascertain the relationships of the genus, but found that while different analytic variants supported different affinities—with aardvarks, hyraxes, ungulates (hooved mammals), and even lipotyphlans (shrews, moles, hedgehogs, and allies)—there was no compelling evidence linking it to any other eutherian group. Therefore, he erected a separate order for Plesiorycteropus, named Bibymalagasia, arguing that it would be unacceptable to leave a Recent eutherian unassigned to any order and that discovery of more material, or further analysis, was unlikely to demonstrate close affinities of Plesiorycteropus with any other order. He considered it possible but unlikely that a few fossil taxa, such as Palaeorycteropus and Leptomanis from the Paleogene of France, would eventually be found to be bibymalagasians. Various analyses published by Robert Asher and colleagues in 2003, 2005, and 2007, based on morphology combined with DNA sequence data in some analyses, produced different estimates of the relationships of Plesiorycteropus, some placing it within Afrotheria close to aardvarks or Afrosoricida, but others supporting a relationship with the hedgehog Erinaceus. A 2004 morphological study by Inés Horovitz, focusing on extinct South American ungulates (such as Notoungulata and Litopterna), placed Plesiorycteropus among tubulidentates and closer to the extinct aardvark relative Myorycteropus than to Orycteropus. A 2013 study by Michael Buckley examined preserved collagen sequences in Plesiorycteropus bones. He found the animal was most closely related to the tenrecs, a family of insectivorous afrotherian mammals endemic to Madagascar. Tenrecs are believed to have diversified from a common ancestor that lived 29–37 million years (Ma) ago after dispersing from Africa via a single rafting event. Buckley's analysis showed that Plesiorycteropus and the two members of subfamily Tenrecinae tested formed a monophyletic group, within a larger clade in which golden moles are the sister group; he suggested that Plesiorycteropus should be placed in the order Tenrecoidea along with tenrecs as well as African otter shrews and golden moles (the latter two diverged from tenrecs about 47–53 Ma ago and 59–69 Ma ago, respectively). He did not test members of the other two Tenrecidae subfamilies or otter shrews, leaving open the possibility that Plesiorycteropus nests within Tenrecidae. ### Common names "Madagascar aardvark" has been used as a common name for Plesiorycteropus, but MacPhee considered it inappropriate because the animal may not be related to aardvarks. Instead, he proposed "bibymalagasy" as a common name, a manufactured Malagasy word meaning "Malagasy animal". ## Description Plesiorycteropus is known from a number of subfossil bones, comparable to coverage of some of the poorly known subfossil lemurs, such as Daubentonia robusta. The material includes several skulls, all of which are missing the facial bones, complete long bones such as the femur and humerus (upper arm bone), and other bones, but some elements are still unknown, including most of the skeleton of the hand and foot. There is little reason to assume it was similar in general form to the aardvark. No teeth or jaws referable to Plesiorycteropus have been found, and it is generally assumed that the animal was toothless. Based on the area of a femur cross-section, MacPhee calculated estimates of body mass. The lowest estimate, based on comparative data from armadillos and pangolins, was 6 kilograms (13 lb) for the smallest femur he had (referable to P. germainepetterae) and the highest estimate, based on comparative data from caviomorph rodents, was 18 kilograms (40 lb) for the largest available femur (P. madagascariensis); estimates from primates fell between those extremes. MacPhee favored the lower estimates, because those were based on armadillos, which have femora similar to those of Plesiorycteropus. On the other hand, the caviomorph model produced a better estimate of brain size in Plesiorycteropus. Any of the estimates makes it considerably larger than the largest living tenrec, Tenrec ecaudatus, at up to 2 kilograms (4.4 lb). The higher estimates would make it larger than any extant native Malagasy mammal. This is consistent with the trend for larger members of the late Pleistocene and Holocene faunas of Madagascar and elsewhere to have been at higher risk of extinction. ### Skull There are four known skulls (three of P. madagascariensis and one of P. germainepetterae), each of which is damaged. All are missing the front (rostral) part, and three are broken at about the same place (at the paranasal cavities, at the front of the braincase), suggesting that the front part of the skull was thinner and more fragile than the back part, which consists of thick bones. MacPhee estimated maximum skull length in P. madagascariensis at 101 millimetres (4.0 in). The length of the frontal bone averages 35.4 millimetres (1.39 in) in P. madagascariensis and is 29.4 millimetres (1.16 in) in P. germainepetterae. The robust nasal bones, preserved in a single specimen, are widest at the front, a feature unusual among placentals that is also seen in armadillos, and are also unusually flat. The ethmoid labyrinth, in the nasal cavity, was large, suggesting that Plesiorycteropus had a good sense of smell. A much larger part of the nasal septum, which separates the left and right nasal cavities, is ossified than usual in other mammals; MacPhee could find a similar condition only in sloths, which have a very short nose. The lacrimal bone is relatively large. At it is a single lacrimal canal, which opens near the suture between the frontal and lacrimal bones, like in lipotyphlans. There is a small tubercle (absent in aardvarks) near this opening. The orbital cavity, which houses the eyes, is relatively short, similar to the situation in pangolins and armadillos. A distinct tubercle is present on the suture between the frontal and parietal bones in P. germainepetterae, but not P. madagascariensis. P. madagascariensis has a more expansive braincase and a less pronounced narrowing between the orbits. The foramen rotundum, an opening in the bone of the orbit, is present. The optic canal, which houses the nerves leading to the eyes, is narrow, suggesting that the eyes were small, similar to many other tenrecoids. As in pangolins and xenarthrans, little of the squamosal bone can be seen from above. The temporal lines on the braincase, which anchor muscles, are located lower in P. germainepetterae. Like in aardvarks, the parietals are relatively large. An interparietal bone is present. Unlike in anteaters and pangolins, the occiput (the back of the skull) is flat and vertical. Plesiorycteropus lacks notches above the foramen magnum (the opening that connects the brain to the spinal cord), which are present in aardvarks. The nuchal crest, a projection on the occiput, is straight in P. madagascariensis, but in P. germainepetterae it is interrupted in the middle, similar to the situation in armadillos and hyraxes. In their descriptions of Plesiorycteropus, Lamberton and Patterson posited different interpretations of the location of the mandibular fossa, where the mandible (lower jaw) articulates with the cranium. MacPhee found problems with either interpretation and suggested that the true mandibular fossa was part of the area Lamberton identified as such, at the side of the braincase. The fossa is small and low, suggesting that the animal was not capable of powerful biting. At the back of this fossa is a pseudoglenoid proces, which is more prominent in P. germainepetterae. In P. germainepetterae but not P. madagascariensis, a small opening, perhaps the vascular foramen, is present next to the foramen ovale. The petrosal bone forms a relatively large portion of the roof of the tympanic cavity, which houses the middle ear; parts of the petrosal are more developed in P. madagascariensis. Endocasts (casts of the inside of the skull) indicate that the neopallium part of the brain was relatively small. ### Postcranium There are 34 known vertebrae of Plesiorycteropus. The animal had at least seven sacral and five or six lumbar vertebrae. A find of associated caudal vertebrae from the base of the tail, which diminish in size only slowly from front to back, suggests that the tail was long. There is no evidence for the additional joints between the vertebrae that are characteristic of xenarthrans. In the seven known thoracic (chest) vertebrae, the articulations with the intervertebral disks are bean-shaped and much wider from side to side than from top to bottom. In the back thoracics and all lumbars, a longitudinal transarcual canal is present in the neural arch. A scapula (shoulder blade), only tentatively assigned to Plesiorycteropus, has the acromion, a process, present, but the structure is probably not as large as in aardvarks or armadillos. Six humeri have been found; the bone is robust and an entepicondylar foramen is present in the distal (far) end. There are three examples of the radius, a compact and massive bone in Plesiorycteropus which resembles the pangolin radius. The three known ulnae show that the olecranon process at the proximal (near) end is well-developed, but the distal end is narrow; the morphology of the bone suggests that the animal was capable of producing much force with its arms. The innominate is known from seven examples, but most are quite incomplete. It includes a narrow ilium and long ischium. The ischial tuberosity, a narrow rough piece of bone in most placentals, is broad and smooth in Plesiorycteropus. With 17 specimens, the femur is the best represented long bone. It is distinctive in its long neck, similar only to the gymnure Echinosorex according to MacPhee. A projection known as the third trochanter is larger in P. madagascariensis. The tibia and fibula are extensively fused into a tibiofibula, of which eight examples are known. This bone resembles that of armadillos in the extensive fusion, the compression of the shaft of the tibia, the narrowness of the articulation surface at the distal end, and the broad space between the bones. Unlike in armadillos, the tibia and fibula are not inclined relative to each other, but about parallel. The astragalus, which is known from four examples, is wide and short and contains a uniquely large posteromedial process. Seven metapodials (middle hand or foot bones) are known, rather variable in size, but MacPhee was unable to separate metacarpals (from the hand) and metatarsals (from the foot). All are rather short and are broad proximally and narrow distally. Among the few known phalanges, the proximal phalange is shorter than the middle one and the distal phalanges are narrow and clawlike. ## Ecology, behavior, and extinction The forelimbs of Plesiorycteropus show specializations for scratch-digging, in which the forefeet are placed against the substrate, the claws are entered into the substrate, and the forefeet are then drawn back against the body. Other parts of the body also show such specializations, including large hindlimbs and a broad tail. Some aspects of the vertebral column and the pelvis suggest that the animal often assumed an erect, or sitting, posture. The animal may also have been capable of climbing, perhaps in a manner similar to gymnures and shrew tenrecs, which are small-eyed like Plesiorycteropus. It was probably myrmecophagous, eating insects such as ants and termites, but may also have eaten other soft food, and because of its small size probably did not forage in termite mounds, as the aardvark does. MacPhee had material of Plesiorycteropus from twelve sites in central, western, and southern Madagascar. It and other recently extinct Madagascar mammals may have lived in and near wetlands. P. madagascariensis is known from sites throughout this range, but P. germainepetterae has only been definitely recorded from the center; small bones from southern sites may also belong to it. Thus, the two species apparently had widely overlapping ranges. Little is known about the extinction of Plesiorycteropus, but MacPhee assumed it may have happened around 1000 years ago, when the extinction of the rest of the subfossil fauna of Madagascar is thought to have concluded. Nothing like it was reported by 17th-century European explorers of the island, and one bone has been radiocarbon dated to around 2150 Before Present (200 BCE). Its extinction is somewhat anomalous, as other recently extinct Madagascan animals—such as subfossil lemurs, Malagasy hippopotamuses, the giant fossa, and elephant birds—were generally larger and not exclusively insectivorous; also, some species with likely more specialized diets, such as the falanouc (Eupleres goudoti) and aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis), did survive. Early human colonists of Madagascar may have caused the extinction of Plesiorycteropus through the destruction of the forest and other disturbances. ## See also - List of mammals of Madagascar

Edgar Kain

New Zealand fighter pilot

Edgar James Kain, DFC (27 June 1918 – 7 June 1940) was a New Zealand fighter pilot and flying ace who flew in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War. Born in Hastings, New Zealand, Kain developed an early interest in aviation and joined the RAF in 1936. He completed his flight training the following year and was posted to the RAF's No. 73 Squadron, flying the Gloster Gladiator and then the Hawker Hurricane. On the outbreak of the Second World War the squadron was dispatched to France. Kain began flying operational sorties during the Phoney War and gained his first aerial victory, a German bomber, in November 1939. He claimed his fifth aerial victory in March 1940, becoming the RAF's first flying ace of the Second World War as well as its first recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross. His success early in the war and consequent media reports made him well known in Britain and the Dominions. The Phoney War ended on 10 May 1940, when the German invasion of France and the Low Countries began. Within 17 days, Kain had claimed a further 9 aerial victories. By early June, he was physically exhausted and ordered to return to England. On 7 June 1940, having bid farewell to his squadron and in a gesture to his comrades, he took off in a Hurricane to perform a series of low-level aerobatics over Échemines airfield. While performing one of these manoeuvres, he crashed at high speed and was killed instantly. At the time of his death he was ranked flying officer and was officially credited with 14 aerial victories. Subsequent research suggests he destroyed 16 enemy aircraft. Originally buried in Troyes Cemetery, his remains were relocated to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Choloy War Cemetery, near Nancy, after the war. ## Early life Edgar James Kain was born in Hastings, New Zealand, on 27 June 1918, the third of four children of George Kain, a warehouseman, and his wife Nellie née Keen. His family moved to Wellington, where his father set up a warehousing business. Kain was educated at Croydon School and, from 1932, at Christ's College, Christchurch, where he boarded. At school he played rugby, participated in rowing and excelled at athletics. He was seen as a natural leader, but unmotivated academically. In Christchurch, Kain's school was near Wigram Aerodrome and he would often see aircraft of the Royal New Zealand Air Force approaching and taking off. He was passionate about aviation from an early age and eager to fly. After three years at Christ's College, with a poor academic record, he left school in 1935 without graduating. He worked as a clerk in his father's warehousing business and also became a member of the Wellington Aero Club. His intention was to obtain a pilot's licence and then join the Royal Air Force (RAF). Kain's flying lessons commenced in early 1936 and he soon soloed in a Tiger Moth, having accumulated just over seven hours of flying time. He also received tuition in mathematics from Professor George William von Zedlitz of the Victoria University of Wellington; this was necessary after his failure to graduate from secondary school as such academic qualifications were prerequisites enter the RAF as a pilot. Later that year he transferred to Wigram for further flight training and he soon secured his pilot's licence. He was then able to meet the requirements for a short-service commission in the RAF; under this scheme, entrants would serve a four-year period and then, if suitable, transfer to a permanent commission. Applicants needed to apply to the Air Ministry in London. Accordingly, having convinced his parents to support his endeavours, Kain departed New Zealand in November 1936, accompanying his father on a business trip to England aboard the RMS Orford. ## Early military career Once in London, Kain formally applied to the Air Ministry for a short-service commission in the RAF but failed his medical due to high blood pressure. He was told to reapply once he had acclimatised; the lengthy voyage from New Zealand had taken its toll on his fitness. He spent two weeks labouring on a farm to improve his condition and passed the subsequent medical. Having been accepted, Kain was sent to a civilian flying school in Brough, near Hull, for elementary flight training. The use of a civilian facility was to help filter out unsuitable entrants before entering the RAF flight training system. Kain commenced his training at the school on 21 December 1936, and was soon flying a Blackburn B-2 trainer solo. Towards the end of the ten-week course, he was asked for his preference for further training: bombers or fighters. He opted for fighters, seeing it as a more exciting prospect. On completion of the elementary course on 5 March 1937, Kain was accepted for a short-service commission with the rank of acting pilot officer and the service number 39534. His probationary period of 12 months began on 8 March 1937, calculated from the commencement of his elementary training. He proceeded to RAF Uxbridge for basic military training and then went onto No. 5 Flying Training School at RAF Sealand in Cheshire. He gained his wings on 25 June 1937 and was sent to RAF Ternhill a few months later for advanced training on fighters, flying the Hawker Fury. By this time, Kain had become proficient in aerobatics, but he had also been disciplined for performing stunts at too low an altitude. In November 1937, his training complete, Kain was posted to No. 73 Squadron, which was equipped with the Gloster Gladiator biplane fighter and based at RAF Digby. While serving with the squadron he became known as Cobber, New Zealand slang for a friend. This was partly to distinguish him from one of his fellow pilots, Derek Kain, also a New Zealander and a distant relative. The nickname was also a reflection of his friendly and outgoing nature. Kain's probationary period ended on 21 December 1937, and his rank of pilot officer was confirmed. He continued to develop his aerobatic skills with the Gladiator and in May 1938 took part in the Empire Air Day, giving flying demonstrations to the public. Two months later, the squadron began converting to the new monoplane Hawker Hurricane and Kain began to find its limits, causing light damage to his aircraft after putting it into a high-speed dive, an action for which he was reprimanded. In mid-September 1938, during the Sudetenland crisis, the squadron was placed on standby, although its pilots were not yet fully proficient on the Hurricane. The Munich Agreement that was concluded at the end of the month reduced tensions, and familiarisation training on the Hurricane resumed. In June 1939, Kain crashed during a night flying exercise, when he forgot to lock the undercarriage while landing. A loose panel affected the aircraft's handling, distracting Kain during his landing procedure. He was officially admonished despite the extenuating circumstances. He had a further accident in late July while landing on another night time flying exercise; this time the issue was the surface of the aerodrome and no blame was attached to Kain. He had been promoted to flying officer earlier in the month. ## Second World War On 24 August 1939, as tensions escalated between Britain and Germany, No. 73 Squadron was mobilised for war. It was intended to send the squadron to France as the Air Component of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), designated as part of No. 60 Mobile Wing along with No. 1 Squadron. On 8 September 1939, the Second World War now underway, it deployed to France, initially to Le Havre-Octeville aerodrome in Normandy. On 10 September 1939, Kain flew his first operational patrols, covering ships disembarking the BEF at Cherbourg, without making contact with the enemy. The weather prevented flying for much of the next two weeks and his squadron moved to an airfield near St. Omer towards the end of the month. From there it moved to Rouvres, near Verdun. ### Phoney War No. 73 Squadron's new base was close to the border between France and Germany, and No. 60 Mobile Wing was attached to the Advanced Air Striking Force (AASF), comprising several squadrons of Fairey Battles of Bomber Command. The following months saw little offensive activity in the air; this stage of the conflict was known as the Phoney War. Despite the squadron's proximity to the German border, there was little contact with the enemy and few successful interceptions. By this point, Kain was a section leader in No. 73 Squadron, with responsibility for two wingmen. On 8 November, while on patrol, he spotted a Dornier Do 17 bomber above and ahead of him. As the Do 17 began to climb to 27,000 feet (8,200 m), Kain pursued, made two attacks, and observed several strikes by his machine guns. With his Hurricane showing signs of strain, he attacked again and the Do 17 dived steeply. Kain followed but pulled out when he saw fabric peeling off his wings. The bomber crashed into the small village of Lubey, northwest of Metz, exploding on impact and killing the crew. It was the first aerial victory of the war for No. 73 Squadron and also for a pilot from one of the Dominions. The event was widely reported although, due to the RAF prohibition of the naming of its personnel in the media, Kain was not identified as the successful pilot in British newspapers. Instead he was simply referred to as a 21-year-old New Zealander. Weather conditions affected the flight operations of the wing, now re-designated as No. 67 Wing, for several days, but Kain had a successful encounter on 23 November, near Conflans, when he shot down another Do 17. It was one of four German bomber and reconnaissance aircraft claimed as destroyed by No. 73 Squadron pilots that day. There was little flying from December to February due to the weather. Kain spent some of this period in England on leave with Joyce Phillips, a theatre actress he had met while completing his flight training in 1937. He had been corresponding with her for some time. On returning to the squadron, he temporarily took command of one of its flights. The weather still permitted occasional patrols; in late January his flight encountered a Heinkel He 111 medium bomber but Kain's guns failed to fire. This was later put down to them being affected by the extreme cold. His aircraft received damage from the He 111's defensive armament, and on landing was found to be irreparable. Kain relinquished command of the flight at the end of January, when its regular leader returned from leave. By early February 1940 the thaw was well underway, but this affected the runway of the aerodrome which was prone to bogging, impacting flight operations for the next few weeks. Kain was mentioned in dispatches on 20 February 1940 for his efforts pursuing the He 111 that he sighted late the previous month. Weather conditions improved on 1 March 1940, and the following day Kain became involved in a dogfight with two Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters while in pursuit of some He 111s. He destroyed the first Bf 109 but the second damaged his engine with cannon fire before departing. Over the German lines when the attack took place, Kain glided 30 miles (48 km) from 20,000 feet (6,100 m) to reach French territory. When his damaged engine caught fire, Kain prepared to bail out but had to re-enter the cockpit when he realised his parachute strap was not in position. The flames went out and Kain glided on to a forced-landing at Metz. His Hurricane was a wreck and he had to be flown back to Rouvres by a Bristol Blenheim in the evening. The encounter was reported by the BBC in its main radio bulletin later that day; Kain was not named and only referred to as a New Zealander. A few days later, identified as Cobber, he completed a BBC Radio interview that was broadcast on 9 March 1940. Reporters from the United States were not so restricted and his identity was becoming known in his home country. Kain was soon back on operations and, at the same time, the squadron was re-equipping with updated Hurricanes. In mid-March he was informed of his impending award of the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC), in recognition of the action earlier in the month when he had shot down his first Bf 109. It was to be the first such award to a pilot of Fighter Command. He promptly took ill with German measles and was hospitalised for several days. He did not return to operational duty until 26 March. That day, in the early afternoon he led a section on a defensive patrol over the German lines and encountered a group of Bf 109s. He managed to destroy one Bf 109 and then a second, but shortly afterwards his Hurricane's engine was damaged by a cannon strike from another Bf 109. With his aircraft on fire, he bailed out with shell splinters to his left leg, a bullet-grazed left hand and burns to the face. Landing in no man's land, he made his way to a nearby village. He soon encountered French soldiers and after satisfying them as to his nationality, he was treated by a doctor and driven back to Rouvres in the evening. Shooting down the two Bf 109s in this action made him the RAF's first flying ace of the Second World War. He remained relatively anonymous to the British public, his identity continuing to be simply Cobber when his exploits were reported. The wounds from his latest encounter forced him off flying duties for a few days. During his convalescence the citation for his DFC was published in the London Gazette. It read: > In March, 1940, while on patrol with another aircraft, Flying Officer Kain sighted seven enemy bombers about 5,000 feet above him, and while giving chase well into Germany, he was attacked from behind by an enemy fighter. Showing the finest fighting spirit this officer out-manoeuvred the enemy and although his own aircraft was badly damaged he succeeded in bringing the hostile aircraft down. Thick smoke and oil fumes had filled his cockpit and although unable to see his compass, he skilfully piloted his aircraft inside allied lines in spite of being choked and blinded by the smoke. With the announcement of his DFC, the anonymity he had previously been afforded was no longer possible. There was significant public interest in Kain, his endeavours being widely reported in the United Kingdom and in the Dominions; one newspaper correspondent described Kain as "carrying the Dominion banner across the German frontiers in grand style". Kain went on leave to England on 2 April, intending to spend time with Phillips. Much to his irritation, the couple had to deal with intense media interest during his leave. While in England, he and Phillips announced their engagement, and tentatively set a date in July for the wedding. Kain returned on 14 April to his squadron, which was now based with the rest of No. 67 Wing at Reims and tasked with the protection of the AASF headquarters. Tensions were high as a result of the German invasions of Norway and Denmark, and the Luftwaffe had increased its presence along the French border with Germany. The squadron was shortly back at Rouvres when the expected fighting in France did not occur. Kain was initially stood down from flight operations so did not undertake his first patrol until 21 April. Two days later he and his flight encountered a Messerschmitt Bf 110, which Kain damaged, but was surprised by three Bf 109s which shot down two Hurricanes in return. Kain saw little flying duty for the rest of the month, due to poor weather. ### Battle of France On 10 May 1940, the German forces launched the blitzkrieg through the Low Countries and France. No. 73 Squadron was immediately involved, as several Hurricanes scrambled to deal with a number of German bombers. At around 6:00 am, Kain engaged and shot down a Dornier Do 215, one of nine that he sighted near Metz. He encountered another seven on his return to Rouvres but had exhausted his ammunition in the earlier action. The squadron was ordered back to Reims later in the morning, and assembled there by 2:00 pm. Despite the airfield being bombed later in the afternoon, the squadron flew several defensive patrols that day, Kain flying two of them. He flew a defensive patrol the next morning, then a mission escorting bombers of the AASF to a target at Wiltz. On the last patrol of the day he shot down a Do 215; cannon shells from a Bf 110 damaged the fuselage of his Hurricane. The airfield at Reims was bombed again on 12 May, but this did not affect the squadron's operations, and it flew several missions in the afternoon. While escorting some Fairey Battles on a raid north of Sedan, Kain spotted a Henschel Hs 126 reconnaissance aircraft that he pursued and destroyed over Bouillon. Over the next two days, Luftwaffe activity around Sedan increased in support of the tanks of Panzer Group Kleist crossing the Meuse. The squadron encountered several flights of bombers during operations. Kain had no successful engagements on 13 May to add to his official tally of destroyed aircraft but the same day a newspaper reported that he may have destroyed as many as eleven enemy aircraft, and Kain himself had "lost count". Officially he shot down his tenth enemy aircraft, a Bf 109, the next day. On 15 May, Kain's section encountered a Do 17 and began to initiate an attack. Without firing his guns, Kain saw the crew of the bomber promptly bail out to leave the now pilotless bomber to fly on deeper into France. Casualties in the squadron were now mounting, with four pilots missing or killed in action and a fifth invalided from flying. This saw Kain given command of one of the squadron's flights. The next day, the squadron moved to Villeneuve while Kain led his flight in a covering patrol to help protect the shift to the new base. Despite flying several patrols, there were no encounters with the enemy until the afternoon of 17 May, when Kain came across a group of Bf 110s; he damaged one and later destroyed a Bf 109 that disrupted his attempt to attack a Junkers Ju 88. It was a particularly busy day; the end of it, he had accumulated thirteen hours in the air. The pace of the German advance saw another move by No. 73 Squadron, this time to Gaye, east of Paris, on 18 May. The next day, the entire squadron took part in a defensive patrol during which it met a group of German bombers, He 111s and Ju 88s, with an escort of Bf 110 fighters. The British fighters attacked and Kain shot down a Ju 88 and then a Bf 110. Towards the end of the engagement, he destroyed a He 111. Seven German aircraft had been destroyed for the loss of three Hurricanes, whose pilots all survived to return to the squadron. By now, No. 73 Squadron's pilots were extremely fatigued from extensive operations and minimal rest. Several fresh pilots soon arrived and Kain helped with their introduction to operational flying. On 22 May he received orders to return to England with several other pilots to take on instructional duties. On arrival in Le Bourget on 23 May, from where the group of pilots were to travel to England, Kain and another pilot were ordered to immediately report back to No. 73 Squadron. Once back at Gaye, the two pilots were put on administrative duties and Kain did not fly again until 25 May. That day he led a section in a morning patrol, during which he destroyed a Do 17 but had to then make an emergency landing back at Gaye due to damage inflicted on his Hurricane by machine-gun fire from the bomber's rear gunner. The next day, in a replacement Hurricane, he shot down a Hs 126 near Bouillon. The situation in France was now deteriorating; the French army was defending the line along the Somme and Aisne with the fighter squadrons of the AASF operating in support, while the BEF was being evacuated from Dunkirk. Kain's focus for 26 May was introducing new pilots to operational duties. The following day, the squadron was operating from a forward base at Boos-Rouen, alongside No. 501 Squadron. It was the subject of a bombing raid during which Kain met Ginger Lacey, who later became one of the RAF's highest scoring flying aces of the war. According to Lacey's biographer, the two were sheltering in what turned out to be a petrol dump. Later in the day, while on a patrol over Boos-Rouen, Kain shot down a Do 17. By this time Kain was very fatigued. Many of his fellow pilots had become casualties or been sent back to the United Kingdom, leaving him as one of the few still remaining of the squadron's original flying roster. Other pilots noted he was increasingly preoccupied and nervous. Although he flew patrols on 28 May, Kain saw little action and for the next two days he was grounded by No. 73 Squadron's commander. He resumed flying on 31 May, leading a section in an uneventful mission providing cover for Fairey Battle bombers attacking German forces southeast of Reims. The first two days of June were quiet, but then the squadron received orders to move to Le Mans and operate from an advanced airfield at Échemines. Kain led a flight of Hurricanes there early in the morning of 3 June; they then covered the move of the ground crew and administrative staff to Le Mans. He did not fly the next day and flew a single patrol on 5 June, protecting the airfield. He sighted a Bf 109 and pursued it to near Reims, where he shot it down. ### Final flight On 6 June, suffering nervous exhaustion and fatigue, Kain and another long-serving pilot of No. 73 Squadron received orders to return to England as soon as replacement personnel arrived. A group of pilots arrived the next day for allocation to units of the AASF; four were assigned to Kain's squadron, freeing him to return to England. In front of a group of his squadron mates who gathered at the airfield at Échemines to bid him farewell, he took off in his Hurricane to fly to Le Mans to collect his kit. He then began to perform some low-level aerobatics. On the third of a series of "flick" rolls, he misjudged his altitude and hit the ground heavily. He was thrown from the Hurricane's cockpit and died when he struck the ground some distance away from his crashed aircraft. Kain was originally buried in Troyes Cemetery on 8 June but after the war, his remains were moved to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Choloy War Cemetery, near Nancy. His parents were advised by telegram within two days of his death; his mother and younger sister, Judy Kain, were in transit to England at the time to attend his wedding to Phillips; Judy was to be a bridesmaid. The BBC reported that he was "killed in action" on 10 May. Later in the month, when the RAF published its casualty lists, Kain was recorded as being killed on active service, rather than in action. As the RAF's first recipient of the DFC and its first flying ace of the war, Kain had a high profile in Britain and the Dominions and his death was widely covered in newspapers. King George VI presented Kain's mother and sister, Judy Kain, who had just joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, with his DFC in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 4 September 1940. ## Legacy At the time of Kain's death, he was officially credited with the destruction of 14 enemy aircraft. His fellow pilots believed his score to be higher, ranging from 15 to 20 aircraft destroyed. Kain himself, in late May 1940, believed he had shot down 17 aircraft. Inaccurate media reports credited him with even higher tallies; the Evening Post in New Zealand reported him as having shot down over 40 enemy aircraft. Aviation historians Christopher Shores and Clive Williams credit Kain with 16 aircraft destroyed and 1 damaged, as does author Mike Spick. Kain Place in his home town of Hastings, New Zealand, was named in his honour in 2008. Kain Avenue in Matraville, in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, Australia, is also named for him, as is Kain Avenue, Rotorua.

Sons of Soul

Sons of Soul is the third album by American R\&B band Tony\! Toni\! Toné\!, released on June 22, 1993, by Wing Records and Mercury Records. It follows the success of their 1990 album The Revival, which had extended their popularity beyond R\&B audiences and into the mainstream. The band originally held recording sessions for Sons of Soul at several studios in California, including Westlake Recording Studios in Hollywood and Paradise Recording Studio in Sacramento. When they became jaded with the various people frequenting those studios, Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! moved their sessions to Caribbean Sound Basin in Trinidad, where they ultimately wrote and recorded most of the album. It was produced entirely by the group, who worked with various session musicians and utilized both vintage and contemporary recording equipment. Sons of Soul was recorded as an homage to Tony\! Toni\! Toné\!'s musical influences—classic soul artists of the 1960s and 1970s. Its music incorporated live instrumentation, funk, and hip hop elements such as samples and scratches. Lead singer and bassist Raphael Wiggins handled most of the songwriting, which was characterized by quirky, flirtatious lyrics and reverent ballads. A commercial success, Sons of Soul charted for 43 weeks on the Billboard 200 and earned a double platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). With the album, Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! became one of the most popular R\&B acts during the genre's commercial resurgence in the early 1990s. It was also a widespread critical success, ranking as one of 1993's best records in many critics' year-end lists. ## Background Inspired by live instrumentation, turntablism, and classic soul music, Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! recorded and produced their second album, The Revival, mostly themselves and released it in 1990 to commercial success. The record broadened the group's exposure to fans beyond their initial R\&B audience. However, they became ambivalent about their newfound mainstream success and their music being labeled "retro" by critics. In an interview for People magazine, lead singer and bassist Raphael Wiggins expressed his dissatisfaction with the music industry, saying that "every record company wants to get a group and put 'em in a Benz with a car phone and a beeper, show them dressing in three different outfits, put them in a video shot on a beach with lots of swinging bikinis. You won't ever see us on a beach. We're just down-to-earth, funky, like-to-play guys." Before considering a follow-up album, the band recorded several songs for film soundtracks, including "Me and You" for Boyz n the Hood (1991), "House Party (I Don't Know What You Come to Do)" for House Party 2 (1991), and "Waiting on You" for Poetic Justice (1993). Having fulfilled their creative intentions with The Revival, Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! wanted to pay homage to their musical influences with Sons of Soul. In a 1993 interview for The New York Times, Wiggins elaborated on their direction for the album, stating "We're paying homage to a lot of older artists who paved the way for us artists like the Temptations, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth, Wind and Fire. They're the people who inspired us when we were growing up, people like Aretha Franklin, James Brown. We feel we're the sons of everything and all those people who came before us." He also explained the album's title as a declaration of them being descendants of those artists, "not in a grandiose sense, but from the standpoint that we really are the musical offspring of all that's come before us ... paying homage to our past, but creating in a contemporary environment." ## Recording The group began recording Sons of Soul in 1993. They initially held sessions at several recording studios in California, including Air L.A. Studios, Paramount Recording Studios, and Westlake Recording Studios in Hollywood, Pajama Studios in Oakland, J.Jam Recording in Oakland Hills, and Paradise Recording Studio in Sacramento, where Raphael Wiggins resided at the time. Wiggins, his brother guitarist D'wayne Wiggins, and drummer Timothy Christian Riley each played several instruments for the album. Raphael and D'wayne came up with ideas for songs by playing guitar and a drum machine, and working them into compositions with Riley and Carl Wheeler, an unofficial member and in-studio keyboardist for the group. They also created drum loops at their homes, with Raphael using an Akai MPC60 and D'wayne using an E-mu SP-12, and the group improvised their respective instrumental parts for songs at the studio to a certain loop. They also worked with various session musicians, including string arranger Benjamin Wright, saxophonists Gerald Albright and Lenny Pickett, trumpeter Ray Brown, arranger Clare Fischer, and audio engineer Gerry Brown. Brown engineered the group's previous albums, and later their subsequent output, including Raphael Wiggins' solo albums after Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! Brown recommended for him to use a dynamic microphone when recording his vocals to thicken them with more bass, a practice Wiggins continued throughout his career. Wiggins sought after former Temptations vocalist Eddie Kendricks to sing on "Leavin'", but Kendricks died prior to the sessions. They also worked with two horn sections, The Fat Lip Horns and The SNL Horns, the horn section of the Saturday Night Live Band. Raphael and D'wayne Wiggins sang impromptu musical ideas to the SNL players, who in turn modelled their horn parts after their singing. ### Trinidad sessions Jaded with their lifestyles in California and the various people frequenting the studios, the group moved the sessions to Caribbean Sound Basin in Maraval, a suburb of Port of Spain, Trinidad. The studio complex was one of Trinidad's few high-end recording locations and was founded in 1990 by Trinidadian businessman Robert Amar, who wanted to attract both local and international recording artists with a state-of-the-art facility and the area's culture. The group intended to use to the studio only to polish their previous sessions' output, but ended up writing and recording what became most of the album for two months. D'wayne Wiggins said of the move in an interview for Musician, "the record company really wanted to put what we had out, but we ourselves didn't feel like the album was done." Caribbean Sound Basin housed three separate studios and several amenities, including a swimming pool, gym, sauna, photographic studio, and bedroom suites. In contrast to most recording studios, its interior was spacious and exposed to natural light. At the studio complex, Raphael, D'wayne, and Riley recorded extensively into the night and went out to enjoy the nightlife, before returning to the studio. They often dimmed the lights, burned incense, and drank wine to set the mood when recording, which D'wayne explained in Musician, "We try to make it real calm and mellow. 'Cause you want to be able to get into what you're singing." They also immersed themselves in the local dancehall scene and attended late-night block parties that lasted until dawn. D'wayne later recalled his nightlife experiences with the group in Maravel: > We'd heard dancehall, but we didn't really know anything about it before going there. We would go to these block parties and you could hear them from almost a mile away. You'd just park on the street and walk to the party along with four or five thousand other people, all partying with these giant speakers all over the place. And this happened just about every weekend. Their subsequent recording for the album was influenced by their experiences in Trinidad and Caribbean musical styles, including the rhythms and festive atmosphere of the local music scene. They enlisted Trinidadian dancehall artist General Grant, a regular at Caribbean Sound Basin, to perform a ragga rap on "What Goes Around Comes Around" and "Dance Hall", songs they developed in Trinidad. Raphael Wiggins recalled this in an interview for the Toronto Star: "[Grant] was just hanging around the studio. We asked him to come freestyle on ['What Goes Around Comes Around']. After that, he just kept hanging around. Then we had the song 'Dance Hall' playing one night and he started again, so we just turned on the mic." "My Ex-Girlfriend" was also recorded there. According to D'wayne, they recorded "Tonyies\! In the Wrong Key" in the studio at 3 a.m., and Raphael was "quite snookered" on an alcoholic beverage when delivering his vocals. Collectively, the group had written and recorded approximately 40 songs at the end of the sessions. In an interview for Billboard, D'wayne Wiggins said that they focused on the love songs when having to decide what songs would make the album. ### Production Unlike with their previous albums, the group produced Sons of Soul entirely themselves. They utilized both vintage and contemporary recording gear in the album's production, including a Hammond B-3, Clavinet, ARP String Ensemble, and Korg and Roland synthesizers. Riley viewed that hearing music played from the older instruments affected their songwriting. For his vocals, Raphael recorded with Neumann U 87 and AKG C12A condenser mics, as well as a vintage RCA Type 77-DX microphone. He used a custom five-string bass from a guitar and bass repair shop in San Francisco, as well as a Minimoog analog synthesizer for other bass lines on the album. D'wayne used a Microtech Gefell UM70 for his lead vocals and an AKG 414 for his background vocals. He played a vintage Gibson L6-S and a Fender Coronado guitar, modified with Gibson burst bucker pickups. Aside from his drumming, Riley played both Wurlitzer and Fender Rhodes electric pianos. Caribbean Sound Basin's main studio had both analog and digital equipment, a 60 ft x 70 ft x 18 ft live room, and three isolation booths, for vocals, piano, and drums. The group recorded original tracks using Studer 24- and 48-track recorders and transferred them to a Sony digital recorder. For most songs, MIDI keyboards were played live into a sequencer and left unquantized, while vintage keyboards were recorded to analog tape. Riley said of the process in an interview for Keyboard magazine, "even though we used a sequencer for some stuff, we'd still cut the song live from start to finish. See, the last record was all done with a Synclavier. But this time, we tried to keep it all live and raw." Record producer and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad, credited for programming on the album, assisted in its production. He cited the group's fusion of hip hop production and live instrumentation for Sons of Soul as the inspiration for his subsequent work as a member of A Tribe Called Quest and The Ummah. Muhammad discussed his experience recording Sons of Soul in a 1998 interview, saying that "I'd just hooked this beat up, and [the group] picked up their instruments and started playing. Raphael was singing, and as soon as he touched the bass, it just blew me away." Raphael Wiggins explained how they valued instrumentation when recording the album, saying that "We want everyone to have something to relate to; a drummer will get into the live drums and so on." Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! tracked the final mixes of the songs at Caribbean Sound Basin. Its main studio used a 64-channel SSL 4064 G mixing console, the secondary studio used a 48-track Neve console with flying faders, and its third studio used an Amek BC2 console. The group mostly used the older Neve console. In tracking the songs, they started with a drum machine groove as a basic track and recorded it. The parts recorded with live instrumentation were then added to the mix. Live drums and horn sections were included to attain the sound of performing live. Sons of Soul was subsequently mastered by engineer Herb Powers at his New York City studio P.M. Entertainment. ## Music and lyrics Sons of Soul expanded on the traditional R\&B influences of The Revival, with upbeat funk and classic Motown styles. Songs such as "If I Had No Loot", "My Ex-Girlfriend", and "Tell Me Mama" incorporated lively tempos, strident harmonies, melodic hooks and lead vocalist Raphael Wiggins' high tenor singing. Other songs were performed with funk grooves, including "I Couldn't Keep It to Myself", "Gangsta Groove", "Fun", and "Tonyies\! In the Wrong Key". Rick Mitchell of the Houston Chronicle wrote that the songs' arrangements "cleverly ... integrate classic influences into contemporary grooves." Carl Allen of The Buffalo News claimed that the album "reconnected" black popular music "to its gospel/blues roots with hip-hop flair." Along with older R\&B, the album's music appropriated contemporary urban styles such as dancehall and hip hop, incorporating hip hop beats, turntable scratches, and samples, which were taken from both contemporary rap and older soul. Tony Green of the St. Petersburg Times viewed that Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! incorporated musical aspects from their R\&B and hip hop contemporaries, thereby "representing black pop's Generation X. Mid- to late-twentysomethings caught [at] the tail end of the heyday of acts like Earth, Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder [and] found themselves getting smacked in the face by the rap revolution." The group reproduced what they sampled with live instrumentation, which Keyboard magazine interpreted as an analog approach to the principally digital hip hop genre. The lyrics on Sons of Soul were described by Los Angeles Times critic Connie Johnson as often quirky, while Elysa Gardner from Vibe said they were flirtatious and tender, particularly on ballads such as "Slow Wine" and "(Lay Your Head on My) Pillow"; she felt the group's songwriting throughout the album possessed a "reverent" ethos. Raphael Wiggins was credited with the majority of the songwriting. Laura Zucker of The Sacramento Bee said most of the album was written "solidly in the R\&B tradition of sweet talking and romancing." Unlike most contemporary R\&B and hip hop music at the time, the album's lyrics lacked profane language, with the exception of "My Ex-Girlfriend", which featured the chorus "I couldn't believe it / They tried to tell me my ex-girlfriend is a ho\!" ### Songs The album opens with "If I Had No Loot", which features a New jack swing beat, pronounced guitar licks, vocal samples from hip hop songs, and lyrics about fair-weather friends. The third track, "My Ex-Girlfriend", is a commentary on unfaithful partners, with lowbrow-humor lyrics scolding an ex-girlfriend for her promiscuity. It evolved from a concept D'wayne Wiggins came up with after driving past an Oakland hangout for prostitutes and recognized that one of them was an old friend. The upbeat ballad "Tell Me Mama" has surging dynamics, a horn-filled bridge, and lyrics about responsibility and regret. Phil Gallo of the Los Angeles Times writes that the song utilizes "Jackson 5 and Temptations vocal stylings, Earth, Wind & Fire horn charts and riffs from Sly & the Family Stone hits". According to Rolling Stone journalist Franklin Soults, the album's first five songs comprise a "tour de force that bounces from Motown to New Jack Swing and back before breaking for a series of ballads as sexy as they are sweet". The first ballad, "Slow Wine", describes a Trinidadian slow grind dance, and the next, "(Lay Your Head on My) Pillow", features tender, seductive lyrics, with subtle come-ons, which according to Gil Griffin of The Washington Post "replace hip-hop braggadocio with soul music's promise." "I Couldn't Keep It to Myself" features lush strings and electric piano, which "create a jaunty atmosphere that harkens back to early Kool and the Gang and the Blackbyrds." Its narrator wants to brag to his friends about his new girlfriend's sexual abilities. "Gangsta Groove" adapts hip hop's "gangsta" trope in a humane story, in the vein of blaxploitation. It draws on the funk music of Parliament-Funkadelic, Cameo, and the Ohio Players. "Tonyies\! In the Wrong Key" features a dreamy, dissonant soundscape, slurred vocals, swirling horns, and a James Brown sample. At its end, Raphael Wiggins sings the line "last night a DJ saved my life", a reference to the 1982 song of the same name. Wiggins found his impassive vocal style similar to Sly Stone's on "Family Affair" (1971). "Dance Hall" is styled in the genre of the same name, and also incorporates funk. The segue track "Times Squares 2:30 A.M." was recorded by the group on the street with a tape recorder. "Fun" has a hip hop groove, jazz fusion tone, and irreverent, party theme similar to "Dance Hall". "Anniversary" is about mature, lasting love. Elysa Gardner of Vibe calls it "a grandly romantic, nine-minute bolero that lavishes its female subject with such warmth and respect that the cheeky misogyny of ['My Ex-Girlfriend'] seems instantly forgiveable." "Castleers" is a short vocal track and tribute to Raphael and D'wayne's Castlemont High School chorus group, Castleers Choir, in which they sang as students. Raphael said of its inspiration, "The high school choir was all about that classic R & B harmony, so I named the song after the choir. One of the great things about that experience at school was that it got us ready to go out in the professional world with our music." ## Marketing and sales Sons of Soul was released on June 22, 1993, by Wing Records and Mercury Records, who created a heavy promotional campaign seeking to capitalize on the success of The Revival. Sons of Soul opened to strong sales and became Tony\! Toni\! Toné\!'s highest-charting album. It debuted at number 38 on the Billboard 200 chart in the week of July 10. On July 24, it peaked at number three on the Billboard Top R\&B Albums, on which it charted for 56 weeks. In its first eight weeks of release, Sons of Soul sold 281,961 copies in the US. It charted for 43 weeks on the Billboard 200, and on September 18, it reached its peak position at number 24. By November, the album had sold almost one million copies in the US. Five singles were released in its promotion, including the Hot 100 chart hits "If I Had No Loot" and "Anniversary". On November 14, 1995, the album was certified double platinum by the RIAA, for shipments of two million copies in the US. By 1997, it had sold 1.2 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. To promote Sons of Soul, Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! embarked on a supporting tour that broadened their audience and concert repertoire. Aside from national venues, they promoted the album with concerts in Europe, Australia, and Japan. They also performed on television shows such as Saturday Night Live, Late Show with David Letterman, and The Apollo Theatre Hall of Fame ceremony. In November 1993, the group joined singer Janet Jackson's high-profile Janet. World Tour as a supporting act. However, after a few performances, the band left in January 1994, expressing frustration over their limited time onstage and Jackson's frequent show cancellations. Riley said they were also forced to alter their set list for Jackson's more mainstream, pop audience, while a tour staffer recalled the group "left the tour with no advance notice" and "were extremely unprofessional." They were replaced by Mint Condition as Jackson's opening act. Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! subsequently went on hiatus, as each member pursued his own musical projects, producing and writing for other recording artists, before reuniting to record their 1996 album House of Music. ## Critical reception and legacy Sons of Soul was met with widespread critical acclaim. Billboard praised the record's traditional influences and contemporary sensibilities, calling it "a prismatic record from a maturing group", and The New Yorker said Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! easily transitioned from "irresistible dance tracks ... to lovely, sensuous ballads" on the album. In the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot hailed Sons of Soul as "the most accomplished merger of hip-hop attitude with a '70s R\&B aesthetic", deeming the group's funk and soul music savvy, particularly because of their incorporation of Memphis soul guitars and fashionable rhythms and turntable scratches. Kot compared Raphael Wiggins to Stevie Wonder as a singer, while USA Today's James T. Jones IV believed the record's groovy, catchy songs were comparable to Sly Stone. Reviewing the album in Time, Christopher John Farley found the music elegant and more innovative than the band's previous records. Michael Saunders from The Boston Globe believed even without a song as great as their 1990 hit "Feels Good", the record was "unquestionably better than nearly all of the formulaic soul/pop albums littering the charts", featuring ballads that sounded intimate without being overly sentimental. Robert Christgau was less enthusiastic in his "Consumer Guide" column for The Village Voice, citing "If I Had No Loot" and "Anniversary" as highlights while jokingly calling the group "sexy liars of the year". In a more critical review, Spin's Jonathan Bernstein felt that songs such as "If I Had No Loot" and "What Goes Around Comes Around" were derivative of Tony\! Toni\! Toné\!'s past hits from The Revival, in an attempt to compete with contemporary R\&B acts such as Silk, H-Town, and Intro. At the end of 1993, Sons of Soul was voted the number 19th best album of the year in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll. Q magazine included it on its list of the 50 Best Albums of 1993, while Time ranked the album number one on its year-end list; an accompanying blurb in the list stated: "The Tonyies are a real band, with real instruments, who have succeeded in bringing the art of R.-and-B. songwriting back to the future." It was also named the best album of the year by James T. Jones IV of USA Today, and The New York Times, while Newsday named it one of the year's best albums. In 1994, "Anniversary" was nominated for Grammy Awards for Best R\&B Song and Best R\&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. The album also earned Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! a 1994 critics' award for Best R\&B Group from Rolling Stone. In 1995, Q included Sons of Soul in its publication "In Our Lifetime: Q's 100 Best Albums 1986–94", a list compiled to celebrate its 100th issue. In 2007, Vibe included the record in its list of the 150 Essential Albums of the Vibe Era (1992–2007). ### Impact and reappraisal Sons of Soul bridged the gap between commercial and critical success for Tony\! Toni\! Toné\!, helping them become one of the most popular acts in R\&B at the time. Its success exemplified the genre's commercial resurgence during the early 1990s, when hip hop became the predominant African-American music genre in the mainstream. In 1994, Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune attributed its resurgence to younger artists' blend of live instrumentation and hip hop production values, and cited Sons of Soul as "the most accomplished merger of hip-hop attitude with a '70s R\&B aesthetic." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution hailed it as "a gentle reminder of those glory days" and felt that the group having both vocal and musical talents is most indicative of a return to early R\&B's aesthetics. Furthermore, they garnered mainstream attention in a year of several high-profile controversies with R\&B and hip hop artists such as Michael Jackson and Snoop Dogg. David W. Brown of The Harvard Crimson wrote that Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! is "known primarily for the quality of its music, not its extracurricular reputation, unlike other groups such as Jodeci who rely on a playa-gangsta-mack image to sell-records." Along with acts such as Mint Condition and R. Kelly, Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! played live instruments that complemented their hip hop sensibilities. Their concerts featured visual elements such as incense smoke and kaleidoscopic stage lighting, the group's eccentric wardrobe, and additional instrumentalists, including another guitarist, two drummers, two keyboardists, a violinist, a trumpeter, and a saxophonist. The Charlotte Observer remarked on the group in 1994: "[T]heir use of live instruments on record and onstage makes them an anomaly in the synthesized and sampled world of modern R\&B." With the group's reliance on traditional soul and R\&B values of songwriting and instrumentation, Sons of Soul was a precursor to the neo soul movement of the 1990s. Matt Weitz of The Dallas Morning News wrote in 1993 that the group had distinguished themselves from their New jack swing contemporaries with Sons of Soul and found them aesthetically akin to acts such as Prince and P.M. Dawn. Raphael Wiggins said of their success with the album: > We've been very blessed to be able to be a group that writes our own songs and people have accepted us from both sides, hip hop and the R\&B crowd or whatever you might want to say. I feel very fortunate to be able to do that here in 1993–94, because like you know, it was starting to be a dying thing that was happening. But I guess we were like the bridge between hip hop and soul and R\&B, and being a little bit commercial also helped us. A lot of humor, a lot of nice slow songs and being able to play kind of brought us a foundation. D'wayne Wiggins cited Sons of Soul as his favorite album with the group. Vibe and the Philadelphia Daily News also viewed it as the group's best album; the latter wrote that "it may be the project that got the public's ears ready for all the similarly soulful artists yet to come." AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine felt that they "received their greatest chart success, without compromising their music", which "was still the finely crafted, highly eclectic and funky pop-soul that distinguished their first two albums," but with improved songwriting and playing. Rickey Wright of the Washington City Paper regarded the album as a "hyperactively brilliant" showcase for "deeply resourceful songwriters who kept up with their audience", adding that "hardly anything in '90s R\&B has touched it". In The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Franklin Soults mostly credited Raphael Wiggins for the record's success and said his "high tenor glides as smoothly and confidently as his songwriting". ## Track listing All songs were produced by Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! Notes - "Leavin'" contains a sample of "If the Papes Come" by A Tribe Called Quest. - "What Goes Around Comes Around" and "Dance Hall" feature raps by Trinidadian recording artist General Grant. ## Personnel Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes. ### Tony\! Toni\! Toné\! - Timothy Christian Riley – drum programming, drums, horn synthesizer, keyboards, producer, programming, synthesizer - D'wayne Wiggins – bass, drum programming, drums, guitar, producer, programming - Raphael Wiggins – bass, bass synthesizer, drum programming, drums, keyboards, producer ### Additional musicians - John Affoon – engineer - Gerald Albright – saxophone - Ray Brown – trumpet - Peter Corant – pedal steel, steel guitar - The Fat Lip Horns – horn - Clare Fischer – arranger, string arrangements - Earl Garner – trumpet - General Grant – guest rap - Nick Marach – acoustic guitar, guitar - Bill Ortiz – trumpet - Lenny Pickett – tenor saxophone - John "Jubu" Smith – guitar, upright bass - The SNL Horns – horn - Norbert Stachel – woodwind - Charles Veal – soloist, string arrangements, violin - Carl Wheeler – keyboards - Jon Williams – trumpet - Benjamin Wright – string arrangements - Frank Wright – arranger - George Young – alto saxophone - Reggie C. Young – trombone ### Production - Ali Shaheed Muhammad – programming - Enrique Badulescu – photography - Gerry Brown – engineer, mixing - Joe Capers – engineer - Brian Carrigan – engineer - Ed Eckstine – executive producer - Andy Grassi – engineer - Dave Jahnsen – engineer - Anthony Jeffries – engineer - Ken Kessie – mixing - Kelle Kutsugeras – costume design - L.A. Jae – programming - Craig Long – engineer - Bill Malina – engineer - Neil Perry – engineer - Phase 5 – programming - Sean Pollard – engineer - Bob Power – mixing - Herb Powers – mastering - Aaron Rudden – engineer - Mike Scapelli – engineer - Kirt Shearer – engineer, programming - Maurice Stewart – programming - Mark Sullivan – production coordination, project coordinator - Terry T. – programming - Kenneth A. Van Druten – engineer ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ## Certifications ## See also - Plantation Lullabies

Birmingham campaign

American civil rights campaign in Alabama (1963)

The Birmingham campaign, also known as the Birmingham movement or Birmingham confrontation, was an American movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. Led by Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, Fred Shuttlesworth and others, the campaign of nonviolent direct action culminated in widely publicized confrontations between young black students and white civic authorities, and eventually led the municipal government to change the city's discrimination laws. In the early 1960s, Birmingham was one of the most racially divided cities in the United States, enforced both legally and culturally. Black citizens faced legal and economic disparities, and violent retribution when they attempted to draw attention to their problems. Martin Luther King Jr. called it the most segregated city in the country. Protests in Birmingham began with a boycott led by Shuttlesworth meant to pressure business leaders to open employment to people of all races, and end segregation in public facilities, restaurants, schools, and stores. When local business and governmental leaders resisted the boycott, the SCLC agreed to assist. Organizer Wyatt Tee Walker joined Birmingham activist Shuttlesworth and began what they called Project C, a series of sit-ins and marches intended to provoke mass arrests. When the campaign ran low on adult volunteers, James Bevel thought of the idea of having students become the main demonstrators in the Birmingham campaign. He then trained and directed high school, college, and elementary school students in nonviolence, and asked them to participate in the demonstrations by taking a peaceful walk 50 at a time from the 16th Street Baptist Church to City Hall in order to talk to the mayor about segregation. This resulted in over a thousand arrests, and, as the jails and holding areas filled with arrested students, the Birmingham Police Department, at the direction of the city Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, used high-pressure water hoses and police attack dogs on the children and adult bystanders. Not all of the bystanders were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of SCLC to hold a completely nonviolent walk, but the students held to the nonviolent premise. Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC drew both criticism and praise for allowing children to participate and put themselves in harm's way. The Birmingham campaign was a model of nonviolent direct action protest and, through the media, drew the world's attention to racial segregation in the South. It burnished King's reputation, ousted Connor from his job, forced desegregation in Birmingham, and directly paved the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibited racial discrimination in hiring practices and public services throughout the United States. ## Background ### City of segregation Birmingham, Alabama was, in 1963, "probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States", according to King. Although the city's population of almost 350,000 was 60% white and 40% black, Birmingham had no black police officers, firefighters, sales clerks in department stores, bus drivers, bank tellers, or store cashiers. Black secretaries could not work for white professionals. Jobs available to black workers were limited to manual labor in Birmingham's steel mills, work in household service and yard maintenance, or work in black neighborhoods. When layoffs were necessary, black employees were often the first to go. The unemployment rate for black people was two and a half times higher than for white people. The average income for black employees in the city was less than half that of white employees. Significantly lower pay scales for black workers at the local steel mills were common. Racial segregation of public and commercial facilities throughout Jefferson County was legally required, covered all aspects of life, and was rigidly enforced. Only 10 percent of the city's black population was registered to vote in 1960. In addition, Birmingham's economy was stagnating as the city was shifting from blue collar to white collar jobs. According to Time magazine in 1958, the only thing white workers had to gain from desegregation was more competition from black workers. Fifty unsolved racially motivated bombings between 1945 and 1962 had earned the city the nickname "Bombingham". A neighborhood shared by white and black families experienced so many attacks that it was called "Dynamite Hill". Black churches in which civil rights were discussed became specific targets for attack. Black organizers had worked in Birmingham for about ten years, as it was the headquarters of the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC). In Birmingham, SNYC experienced both successes and failures, as well as arrests and official violence. SNYC was forced out in 1949, leaving behind a Black population that thus had some experience of civil rights organizing. A few years later, Birmingham's black population began to organize to effect change. After Alabama banned the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1956, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth formed the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) the same year to challenge the city's segregation policies through lawsuits and protests. When the courts overturned the segregation of the city's parks, the city responded by closing them. Shuttlesworth's home was repeatedly bombed, as was Bethel Baptist Church, where he was pastor. After Shuttlesworth was arrested and jailed for violating the city's segregation rules in 1962, he sent a petition to Mayor Art Hanes' office asking that public facilities be desegregated. Hanes responded with a letter informing Shuttlesworth that his petition had been thrown in the garbage. Looking for outside help, Shuttlesworth invited Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC to Birmingham, saying, "If you come to Birmingham, you will not only gain prestige, but really shake the country. If you win in Birmingham, as Birmingham goes, so goes the nation." ### Campaign goals King of the SCLC had recently been involved in a campaign to desegregate the city of Albany, Georgia, but did not see the results they had anticipated. Described by historian Henry Hampton as a "morass", the Albany Movement lost momentum and stalled. King's reputation had been hurt by the Albany campaign, and he was eager to improve it. Determined not to make the same mistakes in Birmingham, King and the SCLC changed several of their strategies. In Albany, they concentrated on the desegregation of the city as a whole. In Birmingham, their campaign tactics focused on more narrowly defined goals for the downtown shopping and government district. These goals included the desegregation of Birmingham's downtown stores, fair hiring practices in shops and city employment, the reopening of public parks, and the creation of a bi-racial committee to oversee the desegregation of Birmingham's public schools. King summarized the philosophy of the Birmingham campaign when he said: "The purpose of ... direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation". ### Commissioner of Public Safety A significant factor in the success of the Birmingham campaign was the structure of the city government and the personality of its contentious Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor. Described as an "arch-segregationist" by Time magazine, Connor asserted that the city "ain't gonna segregate no niggers and whites together in this town [sic]". He also claimed that the Civil Rights Movement was a Communist plot, and after the churches were bombed, Connor blamed the violence on local black citizens. Birmingham's government was set up in such a way that it gave Connor powerful influence. In 1958, police arrested ministers organizing a bus boycott. When the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiated a probe amid allegations of police misconduct for the arrests, Connor responded that he "[hadn't] got any damn apology to the FBI or anybody else", and predicted, "If the North keeps trying to cram this thing [desegregation] down our throats, there's going to be bloodshed." In 1961, Connor delayed sending police to intervene when Freedom Riders were beaten by local mobs. The police harassed religious leaders and protest organizers by ticketing cars parked at mass meetings and entering the meetings in plainclothes to take notes. The Birmingham Fire Department interrupted such meetings to search for "phantom fire hazards". Connor was so antagonistic towards the Civil Rights Movement that his actions galvanized support for black Americans. President John F. Kennedy later said of him, "The Civil Rights Movement should thank God for Bull Connor. He's helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln." Turmoil in the mayor's office also weakened the Birmingham city government in its opposition to the campaign. Connor, who had run for several elected offices in the months leading up to the campaign, had lost all but the race for Public Safety Commissioner. Because they believed Connor's extreme conservatism slowed progress for the city as a whole, a group of white political moderates worked to defeat him. The Citizens for Progress was backed by the Chamber of Commerce and other white professionals in the city, and their tactics were successful. In November 1962, Connor lost the race for mayor to Albert Boutwell, a less combative segregationist. However, Connor and his colleagues on the City Commission refused to accept the new mayor's authority. They claimed on a technicality that their terms not expire until 1965 instead of in the spring of 1963. So for a brief time, Birmingham had two city governments attempting to conduct business. ## Focus on Birmingham ### Selective buying campaign Modeled on the Montgomery bus boycott, protest actions in Birmingham began in 1962, when students from local colleges arranged for a year of staggered boycotts. They caused downtown business to decline by as much as 40 percent, which attracted attention from Chamber of Commerce president Sidney Smyer, who commented that the "racial incidents have given us a black eye that we'll be a long time trying to forget". In response to the boycott, the City Commission of Birmingham punished the black community by withdrawing $45,000 ($ in 2024) from a surplus-food program used primarily by low-income black families. The result, however, was a black community more motivated to resist. The SCLC decided that economic pressure on Birmingham businesses would be more effective than pressure on politicians, a lesson learned in Albany as few black citizens were registered to vote in 1962. In the spring of 1963, before Easter, the Birmingham boycott intensified during the second-busiest shopping season of the year. Pastors urged their congregations to avoid shopping in Birmingham stores in the downtown district. For six weeks supporters of the boycott patrolled the downtown area to make sure black shoppers were not patronizing stores that promoted or tolerated segregation. If black shoppers were found in these stores, organizers confronted them and shamed them into participating in the boycott. Shuttlesworth recalled a woman whose $15 hat ($ in 2024) was destroyed by boycott enforcers. Campaign participant Joe Dickson recalled, "We had to go under strict surveillance. We had to tell people, say look: if you go downtown and buy something, you're going to have to answer to us." After several business owners in Birmingham took down "white only" and "colored only" signs, Commissioner Connor told business owners that if they did not obey the segregation ordinances, they would lose their business licenses. ### Project C Martin Luther King Jr.'s presence in Birmingham was not welcomed by all in the black community. A local black attorney complained in Time that the new city administration did not have enough time to confer with the various groups invested in changing the city's segregation policies. Black hotel owner A. G. Gaston agreed. A white Jesuit priest assisting in desegregation negotiations attested the "demonstrations [were] poorly timed and misdirected." Protest organizers knew they would meet with violence from the Birmingham Police Department and chose a confrontational approach to get the attention of the federal government. Wyatt Tee Walker, one of the SCLC founders and the executive director from 1960 to 1964, planned the tactics of the direct action protests, specifically targeting Bull Connor's tendency to react to demonstrations with violence: "My theory was that if we mounted a strong nonviolent movement, the opposition would surely do something to attract the media, and in turn induce national sympathy and attention to the everyday segregated circumstance of a person living in the Deep South." He headed the planning of what he called Project C, which stood for "confrontation". Organizers believed their phones were tapped, so to prevent their plans from being leaked and perhaps influencing the mayoral election, they used code words for demonstrations. The plan called for direct nonviolent action to attract media attention to "the biggest and baddest city of the South". In preparation for the protests, Walker timed the walking distance from the 16th Street Baptist Church, headquarters for the campaign, to the downtown area. He surveyed the segregated lunch counters of department stores, and listed federal buildings as secondary targets should police block the protesters' entrance into primary targets such as stores, libraries, and all-white churches. #### Methods The campaign used a variety of nonviolent methods of confrontation, including sit-ins at libraries and lunch counters, kneel-ins by black visitors at white churches, and a march to the county building to mark the beginning of a voter-registration drive. Most businesses responded by refusing to serve demonstrators. Some white spectators at a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter spat upon the participants. A few hundred protesters, including jazz musician Al Hibbler, were arrested, although Hibbler was immediately released by Connor. The SCLC's goals were to fill the jails with protesters to force the city government to negotiate as demonstrations continued. However, not enough people were arrested to affect the functioning of the city and the wisdom of the plans were being questioned in the black community. The editor of The Birmingham World, the city's black newspaper, called the direct actions by the demonstrators "wasteful and worthless", and urged black citizens to use the courts to change the city's racist policies. Most white residents of Birmingham expressed shock at the demonstrations. White religious leaders denounced King and the other organizers, saying that "a cause should be pressed in the courts and the negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets". Some white Birmingham residents were supportive as the boycott continued. When one black woman entered Loveman's department store to buy her children Easter shoes, a white saleswoman said to her, "Negro, ain't you ashamed of yourself, your people out there on the street getting put in jail and you in here spending money and I'm not going to sell you any, you'll have to go some other place." King promised a protest every day until "peaceful equality had been assured" and expressed doubt that the new mayor would ever voluntarily desegregate the city. #### City reaction On April 10, 1963, Bull Connor obtained an injunction barring the protests and subsequently raised bail bond for those arrested from $200 to $1,500 ($ to $ in 2024). Fred Shuttlesworth called the injunction a "flagrant denial of our constitutional rights" and organizers prepared to defy the order. The decision to ignore the injunction had been made during the planning stage of the campaign. King and the SCLC had obeyed court injunctions in their Albany protests and reasoned that obeying them contributed to the Albany campaign's lack of success. In a press release they explained, "We are now confronted with recalcitrant forces in the Deep South that will use the courts to perpetuate the unjust and illegal systems of racial separation". Incoming mayor Albert Boutwell called King and the SCLC organizers "strangers" whose only purpose in Birmingham was "to stir inter-racial discord". Connor promised, "You can rest assured that I will fill the jail full of any persons violating the law as long as I'm at City Hall." The movement organizers found themselves out of money after the amount of required bail was raised. Because King was the major fundraiser, his associates urged him to travel the country to raise bail money for those arrested. He had, however, previously promised to lead the marchers to jail in solidarity, but hesitated as the planned date arrived. Some SCLC members grew frustrated with his indecisiveness. "I have never seen Martin so troubled", one of King's friends later said. After King prayed and reflected alone in his hotel room, he and the campaign leaders decided to defy the injunction and prepared for mass arrests of campaign supporters. To build morale and to recruit volunteers to go to jail, Ralph Abernathy spoke at a mass meeting of Birmingham's black citizens at the 6th Avenue Baptist Church: "The eyes of the world are on Birmingham tonight. Bobby Kennedy is looking here at Birmingham, the United States Congress is looking at Birmingham. The Department of Justice is looking at Birmingham. Are you ready, are you ready to make the challenge? I am ready to go to jail, are you?" With Abernathy, King was among 50 Birmingham residents ranging in age from 15 to 81 years who were arrested on Good Friday, April 12, 1963. It was King's 13th arrest. ### Martin Luther King Jr. jailed Martin Luther King Jr. was held in the Birmingham jail and was denied a consultation with an attorney from the NAACP without guards present. When historian Jonathan Bass wrote of the incident in 2001, he noted that news of King's incarceration was spread quickly by Wyatt Tee Walker, as planned. King's supporters sent telegrams about his arrest to the White House. He could have been released on bail at any time, and jail administrators wished him to be released as soon as possible to avoid the media attention while King was in custody. However, campaign organizers offered no bail in order "to focus the attention of the media and national public opinion on the Birmingham situation". Twenty-four hours after his arrest, King was allowed to see local attorneys from the SCLC. When Coretta Scott King did not hear from her husband, she called Walker and he suggested that she call President Kennedy directly. Mrs. King was recuperating at home after the birth of their fourth child when she received a call from President Kennedy the Monday after the arrest. The president told her she could expect a call from her husband soon. When Martin Luther King Jr. called his wife, their conversation was brief and guarded; he correctly assumed that his phones were tapped. Several days later, Jacqueline Kennedy called Coretta Scott King to express her concern for King while he was incarcerated. Using scraps of paper given to him by a janitor, notes written on the margins of a newspaper, and later a legal pad given to him by SCLC attorneys, King wrote his essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail". It responded to eight politically moderate white clergymen who accused King of agitating local residents and not giving the incoming mayor a chance to make any changes. The essay was a culmination of many of King's ideas, which he had touched on in earlier writings. King's arrest attracted national attention, including that of corporate officers of retail chains with stores in downtown Birmingham. After King's arrest, the chains' profits began to erode. National business owners pressed the Kennedy administration to intervene. King was released on April 20, 1963. ## Conflict escalation ### Recruiting students Despite the publicity surrounding King's arrest, the campaign was faltering because few demonstrators were willing to risk arrest. In addition, although Connor had used police dogs to assist in the arrest of demonstrators, this did not attract the media attention that organizers had hoped for. To re-energize the campaign, SCLC organizer James Bevel devised a controversial alternative plan he named D Day that was later called the "Children's Crusade" by Newsweek magazine. D Day called for students from Birmingham elementary schools and high schools as well as nearby Miles College to take part in the demonstrations. Bevel, a veteran of earlier nonviolent student protests with the Nashville Student Movement and SNCC, had been named SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education. After initiating the idea he organized and educated the students in nonviolence tactics and philosophy. King hesitated to approve the use of children, but Bevel believed that children were appropriate for the demonstrations because jail time for them would not hurt families economically as much as the loss of a working parent. He also saw that adults in the black community were divided about how much support to give the protests. Bevel and the organizers knew that high school students were a more cohesive group; they had been together as classmates since kindergarten. He recruited girls who were school leaders and boys who were athletes. Bevel found girls more receptive to his ideas because they had less experience as victims of white violence. When the girls joined, however, the boys were close behind. Bevel and the SCLC held workshops to help students overcome their fear of dogs and jails. They showed films of the Nashville sit-ins organized in 1960 to end segregation at public lunch counters. Birmingham's black radio station, WENN, supported the new plan by telling students to arrive at the demonstration meeting place with a toothbrush to be used in jail. Flyers were distributed in black schools and neighborhoods that said, "Fight for freedom first then go to school" and "It's up to you to free our teachers, our parents, yourself, and our country." ### Children's Crusade On May 2, 1963, 7th grader Gwendolyn Sanders helped organize her classmates, and hundreds of children from high schoolers down to first graders who joined her in a massive walkout defying the principal of Parker High School who attempted to lock the gates to keep students inside. Demonstrators were given instructions to march to the downtown area, to meet with the Mayor, and integrate the chosen buildings. They were to leave in smaller groups and continue on their courses until arrested. Marching in disciplined ranks, some of them using walkie-talkies, they were sent at timed intervals from various churches to the downtown business area. More than 600 students were arrested; the youngest of these was reported to be eight years old. Children left the churches while singing hymns and "freedom songs" such as "We Shall Overcome". They clapped and laughed while being arrested and awaiting transport to jail. The mood was compared to that of a school picnic. Although Bevel informed Connor that the march was to take place, Connor and the police were dumbfounded by the numbers and behavior of the children. They assembled paddy wagons and school buses to take the children to jail. When no squad cars were left to block the city streets, Connor, whose authority extended to the fire department, used fire trucks. The day's arrests brought the total number of jailed protesters to 1,200 in the 900-capacity Birmingham jail. Some considered the use of children controversial, including incoming Birmingham mayor Albert Boutwell and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who condemned the decision to use children in the protests. Kennedy was reported in The New York Times as saying, "an injured, maimed, or dead child is a price that none of us can afford to pay", although adding, "I believe that everyone understands their just grievances must be resolved." Malcolm X criticized the decision, saying, "Real men don't put their children on the firing line." King, who had been silent and then out of town while Bevel was organizing the children, was impressed by the success of the children's protests. That evening he declared at a mass meeting, "I have been inspired and moved by today. I have never seen anything like it." Although Wyatt Tee Walker was initially against the use of children in the demonstrations, he responded to criticism by saying, "Negro children will get a better education in five days in jail than in five months in a segregated school." The D Day campaign received front page coverage by The Washington Post and The New York Times. ### Fire hoses and police dogs When Connor realized that the Birmingham jail was full, on May 3 he changed police tactics to keep protesters out of the downtown business area. Another thousand students gathered at the church and left to walk across Kelly Ingram Park while chanting, "We're going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom ... freedom ... freedom." As the demonstrators left the church, police warned them to stop and turn back, "or you'll get wet". When they continued, Connor ordered the city's fire hoses, set at a level that would peel bark off a tree or separate bricks from mortar, to be turned on the children. Boys' shirts were ripped off, and girls were pushed over the tops of cars by the force of the water. When the students crouched or fell, the blasts of water rolled them down the asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks. Connor allowed white spectators to push forward, shouting, "Let those people come forward, sergeant. I want 'em to see the dogs work." A.G. Gaston, who was appalled at the idea of using children, was on the phone with white attorney David Vann trying to negotiate a resolution to the crisis. When Gaston looked out the window and saw the children being hit with high-pressure water, he said, "Lawyer Vann, I can't talk to you now or ever. My people are out there fighting for their lives and my freedom. I have to go help them", and hung up the phone. Black parents and adults who were observing cheered on the marching students, but when the hoses were turned on, bystanders began to throw rocks and bottles at the police. To disperse them, Connor ordered police to use German Shepherd dogs to keep them in line. James Bevel wove in and out of the crowds warning them, "If any cops get hurt, we're going to lose this fight." At 3 pm, the protest was over. During a kind of truce, protesters went home. Police removed the barricades and re-opened the streets to traffic. That evening King told worried parents in a crowd of a thousand, "Don't worry about your children who are in jail. The eyes of the world are on Birmingham. We're going on in spite of dogs and fire hoses. We've gone too far to turn back now." #### Images of the day The images had a profound effect in Birmingham. Despite decades of disagreements, when the photos were released, "the black community was instantaneously consolidated behind King", according to David Vann, who would later serve as mayor of Birmingham. Horrified at what the Birmingham police were doing to protect segregation, New York Senator Jacob K. Javits declared, "the country won't tolerate it", and pressed Congress to pass a civil rights bill. Similar reactions were reported by Kentucky Senator Sherman Cooper, and Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, who compared Birmingham to South Africa under apartheid. A New York Times editorial called the behavior of the Birmingham police "a national disgrace." The Washington Post editorialized, "The spectacle in Birmingham ... must excite the sympathy of the rest of the country for the decent, just, and reasonable citizens of the community, who have so recently demonstrated at the polls their lack of support for the very policies that have produced the Birmingham riots. The authorities who tried, by these brutal means, to stop the freedom marchers do not speak or act in the name of the enlightened people of the city." President Kennedy sent Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall to Birmingham to help negotiate a truce. Marshall faced a stalemate when merchants and protest organizers refused to budge. ### Standoff Black onlookers in the area of Kelly Ingram Park abandoned nonviolence on May 5. Spectators taunted police, and SCLC leaders begged them to be peaceful or go home. James Bevel borrowed a bullhorn from the police and shouted, "Everybody get off this corner. If you're not going to demonstrate in a nonviolent way, then leave\!" Commissioner Connor was overheard saying, "If you'd ask half of them what freedom means, they couldn't tell you." To prevent further marches, Connor ordered the doors to the churches blocked to prevent students from leaving. By May 6, the jails were so full that Connor transformed the stockade at the state fairgrounds into a makeshift jail to hold protesters. Black protestors arrived at white churches to integrate services. They were accepted in Roman Catholic, Episcopal, and Presbyterian churches but turned away at others, where they knelt and prayed until they were arrested. Well-known national figures arrived to show support. Singer Joan Baez arrived to perform for free at Miles College and stayed at the black-owned and integrated Gaston Motel. Comedian Dick Gregory and Barbara Deming, a writer for The Nation, were both arrested. The young Dan Rather reported for CBS News. The car of Fannie Flagg, a local television personality and recent Miss Alabama finalist, was surrounded by teenagers who recognized her. Flagg worked at Channel 6 on the morning show, and after asking her producers why the show was not covering the demonstrations, she received orders never to mention them on air. She rolled down the window and shouted to the children, "I'm with you all the way\!" Birmingham's fire department refused orders from Connor to turn the hoses on demonstrators again, and waded through the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church to clean up water from earlier fire-hose flooding. White business leaders met with protest organizers to try and arrange an economic solution but said they had no control over politics. Protest organizers disagreed, saying that business leaders were positioned to pressure political leaders. ### City paralysis The situation reached a crisis on May 7, 1963. Breakfast in the jail took four hours to distribute to all the prisoners. Seventy members of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce pleaded with the protest organizers to stop the actions. The NAACP asked for sympathizers to picket in unity in 100 American cities. Twenty rabbis flew to Birmingham to support the cause, equating silence about segregation to the atrocities of the Holocaust. Local rabbis disagreed and asked them to go home. The editor of The Birmingham News wired President Kennedy and pleaded with him to end the protests. Fire hoses were used once again, injuring police and Fred Shuttlesworth, as well as other demonstrators. Commissioner Connor expressed regret at missing seeing Shuttlesworth get hit and said he "wished they'd carried him away in a hearse". Another 1,000 people were arrested, bringing the total to 2,500. News of the mass arrests of children had reached Western Europe and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union devoted up to 25 percent of its news broadcast to the demonstrations, sending much of it to Africa, where Soviet and U.S. interests clashed. Soviet news commentary accused the Kennedy administration of neglect and "inactivity". Alabama Governor George Wallace sent state troopers to assist Connor. Attorney General Robert Kennedy prepared to activate the Alabama National Guard and notified the Second Infantry Division from Fort Benning, Georgia that it might be deployed to Birmingham. No business of any kind was being conducted downtown. Organizers planned to flood the downtown area businesses with black people. Smaller groups of decoys were set out to distract police attention from activities at the 16th Street Baptist Church. Protesters set off false fire alarms to occupy the fire department and its hoses. One group of children approached a police officer and announced, "We want to go to jail\!" When the officer pointed the way, the students ran across Kelly Ingram Park shouting, "We're going to jail\!" Six hundred picketers reached downtown Birmingham. Large groups of protesters sat in stores and sang freedom songs. Streets, sidewalks, stores, and buildings were overwhelmed with more than 3,000 protesters. The sheriff and chief of police admitted to Burke Marshall that they did not think they could handle the situation for more than a few hours. ### Resolution On May 8 at 4 am, white business leaders agreed to most of the protesters' demands. Political leaders held fast, however. The rift between the businessmen and the politicians became clear when business leaders admitted they could not guarantee the protesters' release from jail. On May 10, Fred Shuttlesworth and Martin Luther King Jr. told reporters that they had an agreement from the City of Birmingham to desegregate lunch counters, restrooms, drinking fountains and fitting rooms within 90 days, and to hire black people in stores as salesmen and clerks. Those in jail would be released on bond or their own recognizance. Urged by Kennedy, the United Auto Workers, National Maritime Union, United Steelworkers Union, and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) raised $237,000 in bail money ($ in 2024) to free the demonstrators. Commissioner Connor and the outgoing mayor condemned the resolution. On the night of May 11, a bomb heavily damaged the A.G. Gaston Motel where King had been staying—and had left only hours before—and another damaged the house of A. D. King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s brother. When police went to inspect the motel, they were met with rocks and bottles from neighborhood black citizens. The arrival of state troopers only further angered the crowd; in the early hours of the morning, thousands of black people rioted, numerous buildings and vehicles were burned, and several people, including a police officer, were stabbed. By May 13, three thousand federal troops were deployed to Birmingham to restore order, even though Alabama Governor George Wallace told President Kennedy that state and local forces were sufficient. Martin Luther King Jr. returned to Birmingham to stress nonviolence. Outgoing mayor Art Hanes left office after the Alabama State Supreme Court ruled that Albert Boutwell could take office on May 21, 1963. Upon picking up his last paycheck, Bull Connor remarked tearfully, "This is the worst day of my life." In June 1963, the Jim Crow signs regulating segregated public places in Birmingham were taken down. ## After the campaign Desegregation in Birmingham took place slowly after the demonstrations. King and the SCLC were criticized by some for ending the campaign with promises that were too vague and "settling for a lot less than even moderate demands". In fact, Sydney Smyer, president of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, re-interpreted the terms of the agreement. Shuttlesworth and King had announced that desegregation would take place 90 days from May 15. Smyer then said that a single black clerk hired 90 days from when the new city government took office would be sufficient. By July, most of the city's segregation ordinances had been overturned. Some of the lunch counters in department stores complied with the new rules. City parks and golf courses were opened again to black and white citizens. Mayor Boutwell appointed a biracial committee to discuss further changes. However, no hiring of black clerks, police officers, and firefighters had yet been completed and the Birmingham Bar Association rejected membership by black attorneys. The reputation of Martin Luther King Jr. soared after the protests in Birmingham, and he was lauded by many as a hero. The SCLC was much in demand to effect change in many Southern cities. In the summer of 1963, King led the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where he delivered his most famous speech, "I Have a Dream". King became Time'''s Man of the Year for 1963 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. The Birmingham campaign, as well as George Wallace's refusal to admit black students to the University of Alabama, convinced President Kennedy to address the severe inequalities between black and white citizens in the South: "The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them." Despite the apparent lack of immediate local success after the Birmingham campaign, Fred Shuttlesworth and Wyatt Tee Walker pointed to its influence on national affairs as its true impact. President Kennedy's administration drew up the Civil Rights Act bill. After being filibustered for 75 days by "diehard southerners" in Congress, it was passed into law in 1964 and signed by President Lyndon Johnson. The Civil Rights Act applied to the entire nation, prohibiting racial discrimination in employment and in access to public places. Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, however, disagreed that the Birmingham campaign was the primary force behind the Civil Rights Act. Wilkins gave credit to other movements, such as the Freedom Rides, the integration of the University of Mississippi, and campaigns to end public school segregation. Birmingham's public schools were integrated in September 1963. Governor Wallace sent National Guard troops to keep black students out but President Kennedy reversed Wallace by ordering the troops to stand down. Violence continued to plague the city, however. Someone threw a tear gas canister into Loveman's department store when it complied with the desegregation agreement; twenty people in the store required hospital treatment. Four months after the Birmingham campaign settlement, someone bombed the house of NAACP attorney Arthur Shores, injuring his wife in the attack. On September 15, 1963, Birmingham again earned international attention when Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church on a Sunday morning and killed four young girls. FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe was hired to infiltrate the KKK and monitor their activities and plans. Rowe was involved, along with the Birmingham Police, with the KKK attacks on the Freedom Riders, led by Fred Shuttlesworth, in Anniston, Alabama on May 14, 1961. In addition, Rowe and several other Klansmen also partook in the killing of Civil Rights activist Viola Liuzzo on March 25, 1965, in Lowndes County, Georgia after the Selma to Montgomery march. The Birmingham campaign inspired the Civil Rights Movement in other parts of the South. Two days after King and Shuttlesworth announced the settlement in Birmingham, Medgar Evers of the NAACP in Jackson, Mississippi demanded a biracial committee to address concerns there. On June 12, 1963, Evers was murdered by a KKK member outside his home. He had been organizing demonstrations similar to those in Birmingham to pressure Jackson's city government. In 1965 Shuttlesworth assisted Bevel, King, and the SCLC to lead the Selma to Montgomery marches, intended to increase voter registration among black citizens. ### Campaign impact Historian Glenn Eskew wrote that the campaign "led to an awakening to the evils of segregation and a need for reforms in the region." According to Eskew, the riots that occurred after the bombing of the Gaston Motel foreshadowed rioting in larger cities later in the 1960s. ACMHR vice president Abraham Woods claimed that the rioting in Birmingham set a precedent for the "Burn, baby, burn" mindset, a cry used in later civic unrest in the Watts riots, the 12th Street riots in Detroit, and other American cities in the 1960s. A study of the Watts riots concluded, "The 'rules of the game' in race relations were permanently changed in Birmingham." Wyatt Tee Walker wrote that the Birmingham campaign was "legend" and had become the Civil Rights Movement's most important chapter. It was "the chief watershed of the nonviolent movement in the United States. It marked the maturation of the SCLC as a national force in the civil rights arena of the land that had been dominated by the older and stodgier NAACP." Walker called the Birmingham campaign and the Selma marches "Siamese twins" joining to "kill segregation ... and bury the body". Jonathan Bass declared that "King had won a tremendous public relations victory in Birmingham" but also stated pointedly that "it was the citizens of the Magic City, both black and white, and not Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC, that brought about the real transformation of the city." ## See also - Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument - Birmingham Civil Rights Institute - In Eyes on the Prize'', the award-winning documentary on the Civil Rights movement, the Birmingham campaign is one focus of Episode \#4, "No Easy Walk (1961–1963)."

James Tod

Officer of the British East India Company and an Oriental scholar (1782–1835)

Lieutenant-Colonel James Tod (20 March 1782 – 18 November 1835) was an officer of the British East India Company and an Oriental scholar. He combined his official role and his amateur interests to create a series of works about the history and geography of India, and in particular the area then known as Rajputana that corresponds to the present day state of Rajasthan, and which Tod referred to as Rajast'han. Tod was born in London and educated in Scotland. He joined the East India Company as a military officer and travelled to India in 1799 as a cadet in the Bengal Army. He rose quickly in rank, eventually becoming captain of an escort for an envoy in a Sindian royal court. After the Third Anglo-Maratha War, during which Tod was involved in the intelligence department, he was appointed Political Agent for some areas of Rajputana. His task was to help unify the region under the control of the East India Company. During this period Tod conducted most of the research that he would later publish. Tod was initially successful in his official role, but his methods were questioned by other members of the East India Company. Over time, his work was restricted and his areas of oversight were significantly curtailed. In 1823, owing to declining health and reputation, Tod resigned his post as Political Agent and returned to England. Back home in England, Tod published a number of academic works about Indian history and geography, most notably Annals and Antiquities of Rajast'han, based on materials collected during his travels. He retired from the military in 1826, and married Julia Clutterbuck that same year. He died in 1835, aged 53. ## Life and career Tod was born in Islington, London, on 20 March 1782. He was the second son for his parents, James and Mary (née Heatly), both of whom came from families of "high standing", according to his major biographer, the historian Jason Freitag. He was educated in Scotland, whence his ancestors came, although precisely where he was schooled is unknown. Those ancestors included people who had fought with the King of Scots, Robert the Bruce; he took pride in this fact and had an acute sense of what he perceived to be the chivalric values of those times. As with many people of Scots descent who sought adventure and success at that time, Tod joined the British East India Company and initially spent some time studying at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He left England for India in 1799 and in doing so followed in the footsteps of various other members of his family, including his father, although Tod senior had not been in the company but had instead owned an indigo plantation at Mirzapur. The young Tod journeyed as a cadet in the Bengal Army, appointment to which position was at the time reliant upon patronage. He was appointed lieutenant in May 1800 and in 1805 was able to arrange his posting as a member of the escort to a family friend who had been appointed as Envoy and Resident to a Sindian royal court. By 1813 he had achieved promotion to the rank of captain and was commanding the escort. Rather than being situated permanently in one place, the royal court was moved around the kingdom. Tod undertook various topographical and geological studies as it travelled from one area to another, using his training as an engineer and employing other people to do much of the field work. These studies culminated in 1815 with the production of a map which he presented to the Governor-General, the Marquis of Hastings. This map of "Central India" (his phrase) became of strategic importance to the British as they were soon to fight the Third Anglo-Maratha War. During that war, which ran from 1817 to 1818, Tod acted as a superintendent of the intelligence department and was able to draw on other aspects of regional knowledge which he had acquired while moving around with the court. He also drew up various strategies for the military campaign. In 1818 he was appointed Political Agent for various states of western Rajputana, in the northwest of India, where the British East India Company had come to amicable arrangements with the Rajput rulers in order to exert indirect control over the area. The anonymous author of the introduction to Tod's posthumously published book, Travels in Western India, says that > Clothed with this ample authority, he applied himself to the arduous task of endeavouring to repair the ravages of foreign invaders who still lingered in some of the fortresses, to heal the deeper wounds inflicted by intestine feuds, and to reconstruct the framework of society in the disorganised states of Rajas'han. Tod continued his surveying work in this physically challenging, arid and mountainous area. His responsibilities were extended quickly: initially involving himself with the regions of Mewar, Kota, Sirohi and Bundi, he soon added Marwar to his portfolio and in 1821 was also given responsibility for Jaisalmer. These areas were considered a strategic buffer zone against Russian advances from the north which, it was feared, might result in a move into India via the Khyber Pass. Tod believed that to achieve cohesion it was necessary that the Rajput states should contain only Rajput people, with all others being expelled. This would assist in achieving stability in the areas, thus limiting the likelihood of the inhabitants being influenced by outside forces. Charanas were called upon to create a master list of the 'Thirty Six Royal Races of Rajasthan' with Tod's guru Yati Gyanchandra presiding the panel. According to Ramya Sreenivasan, a researcher of religion and caste in early modern Rajasthan and of colonialism, Tod's "transfers of territory between various chiefs and princes helped to create territorially consolidated states and 'routinised' political hierarchies." His successes were plentiful and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes that Tod was > so successful in his efforts to restore peace and confidence that within less than a year some 300 deserted towns and villages were repeopled, trade revived, and, in spite of the abolition of transit duties and the reduction of frontier customs, the state revenue had reached an unprecedented amount. During the next five years Tod earned the respect of the chiefs and people, and was able to rescue more than one princely family, including that of the Ranas of Udaipur, from the destitution to which they had been reduced by Maratha raiders. Tod was not, however, universally respected in the East India Company. His immediate superior, David Ochterlony, was unsettled by Tod's rapid rise and frequent failure to consult with him. One Rajput prince objected to Tod's close involvement in the affairs of his state and succeeded in persuading the authorities to remove Marwar from Tod's area of influence. In 1821 his favouritism towards one party in a princely dispute, contrary to the orders given to him, gave rise to a severe reprimand and a formal restriction of his ability to operate without consulting Ochterlony, as well as the removal of Kota from his charge. Jaisalmer was then taken out of his sphere of influence in 1822, as official concerns grew regarding his sympathy for the Rajput princes. This and other losses of status, such as the reduction in the size of his escort, caused him to believe that his personal reputation and ability to work successfully in Mewar, by now the one area still left to him, was too diminished to be acceptable. He resigned his role as Political Agent in Mewar later that year, citing ill health. Reginald Heber, the Bishop of Calcutta, commented that > His misfortune was that, in consequence of favouring native princes so much, the government of Calcutta were led to suspect him of corruption, and consequently to narrow his powers and associate other officers with him in his trust, till he was disgusted and resigned his place. They are now satisfied, I believe, that their suspicions were groundless. In February 1823, Tod left India for England, having first travelled to Bombay by a circuitous route for his own pleasure. During the last years of his life Tod talked about India at functions in Paris and elsewhere across Europe. He also became a member of the newly established Royal Asiatic Society in London, for whom he acted for some time as librarian. He suffered an apoplectic fit in 1825 as a consequence of overwork, and retired from his military career in the following year, soon after he had been promoted to lieutenant-colonel. His marriage to Julia Clutterbuck (daughter of Henry Clutterbuck) in 1826 produced three children – Grant Heatly Tod-Heatly, Edward H. M. Tod and Mary Augusta Tod – but his health, which had been poor for much of his life, was declining. Having lived at Birdhurst, Croydon, from October 1828, Tod and his family moved to London three years later. He spent much of the last year of his life abroad in an attempt to cure a chest complaint and died on 18 November 1835 soon after his return to England from Italy. The cause of death was an apoplectic fit sustained on the day of his wedding anniversary, although he survived for a further 27 hours. He had moved into a house in Regent's Park earlier in that year. ## Worldview Historian Lynn Zastoupil has noted that Tod's personal papers have never been found and "his voluminous publications and official writings contain only scattered clues regarding the nature of his personal relationships with Rajputs". This has not discouraged assessments being made of both him and his worldview. According to Theodore Koditschek, whose fields of study include historiography and British imperial history, Tod saw the Rajputs as "natural allies of the British in their struggles against the Mughal and Maratha states". Norbert Peabody, an anthropologist and historian, has gone further, arguing that "maintaining the active support of groups, like the Rajputs for example, was not only important in meeting the threat of indigenous rivals but also in countering the imperial aspirations of other European powers." He stated that some of Tod's thoughts were "implicated in [British] colonial policy toward western India for over a century." Tod favoured the then-fashionable concept of Romantic nationalism. Influenced by this, he thought that each princely state should be inhabited by only one community and his policies were designed to expel Marathas, Pindaris and other groups from Rajput territories. It also influenced his instigation of treaties that were intended to redraw the territorial boundaries of the various states. The geographical and political boundaries before his time had in some cases been blurred, primarily due to local arrangements based on common kinship, and he wanted a more evident delineation of the entities, He was successful in both of these endeavours. Tod was unsuccessful in implementing another of his ideas, which was also based on the ideology of Romantic nationalism. He believed that the replacement of Maratha rule with that of the British had resulted in the Rajputs merely swapping the onerous overlordship of one government for that of another. Although he was one of the architects of indirect rule, in which the princes looked after domestic affairs but paid tribute to the British for protection in foreign affairs, he was also a critic of it. He saw the system as one that prevented achievement of true nationhood, and therefore, as Peabody describes, "utterly subversive to the stated goal of preserving them as viable entities." Tod wrote in 1829 that the system of indirect rule had a tendency to "national degradation" of the Rajput territories and that this undermined them because > Who will dare to urge that a government, which cannot support its internal rule without restriction, can be national? That without power unshackled and unrestrained by exterior council or espionage, it can maintain its self-respect? This first of feelings these treaties utterly annihilate. Can we suppose such denationalised allies are to be depended upon in emergencies? Or, if allowed to retain a spark of their ancient moral inheritance, that it will not be kindled into a flame against us when opportunity offers? There was a political aspect to his views: if the British recast themselves as overseers seeking to re-establish lost Rajput nations, then this would at once smooth the relationship between those two parties and distinguish the threatening, denationalising Marathas from the paternal, nation-creating British. It was an argument that had been deployed by others in the European arena, including in relation to the way in which Britain portrayed the imperialism of Napoleonic France as denationalising those countries which it conquered, whereas (it was claimed) British imperialism freed people; William Bentinck, a soldier and statesmen who later in life served as Governor-General of India, noted in 1811 that "Bonaparte made kings; England makes nations". However, his arguments in favour of granting sovereignty to the Rajputs failed to achieve that end, although the frontispiece to volume one of his Annals did contain a plea to the then English King George IV to reinstate the "former independence" of the Rajputs. While he viewed the Muslim Mughals as despotic and the Marathas as predatory, Tod saw the Rajput social systems as being similar to the feudal system of medieval Europe, and their traditions of recounting history through the generations as similar to the clan poets of the Scottish Highlanders. There was, he felt, a system of checks and balances between the ruling princes and their vassal lords, a tendency for feuds and other rivalries, and often a serf-like peasantry. The Rajputs were, in his opinion, on the same developmental trajectory that nations such as Britain had followed. His ingenious use of these viewpoints later enabled him to promote in his books the notion that there was a shared experience between the people of Britain and this community in a distant, relatively unexplored area of the empire. He speculated that there was a common ancestor shared by the Rajputs and Europeans somewhere deep in prehistory and that this might be proven by comparison of the commonality in their history of ideas, such as myth and legend. In this he shared a contemporary aspiration to prove that all communities across the world had a common origin. There was another appeal inherent in a feudal system, and it was not unique to Tod: the historian Thomas R. Metcalf has said that > In an age of industrialism and individualism, of social upheaval and laissez-faire, marked by what were perceived as the horrors of continental revolution and the rationalist excesses of Benthamism, the Middle Ages stood forth as a metaphor for paternalist ideals of social order and proper conduct ... [T]he medievalists looked to the ideals of chivalry, such as heroism, honour and generosity, to transcend the selfish calculation of pleasure and pain, and recreate a harmonious and stable society. Above all, the chivalric ideal viewed character as more worthy of admiration than wealth or intellect, and this appealed to the old landed classes at home as well as to many who worked for the Indian Civil Service. In the 1880s, Alfred Comyn Lyall, an administrator of the British Raj who also studied history, revisited Tod's classification and asserted that the Rajput society was in fact tribal, based on kinship rather than feudal vassalage. He had previously generally agreed with Tod, who acknowledged claims that blood-ties played some sort of role in the relationship between princes and vassals in many states. In shifting the emphasis from a feudal to a tribal basis, Lyall was able to deny the possibility that the Rajput kingdoms might gain sovereignty. If Rajput society was not feudal, then it was not on the same trajectory that European nations had followed, thereby forestalling any need to consider that they might evolve into sovereign states. There was thus no need for Britain to consider itself to be illegitimately governing them. Tod's enthusiasm for bardic poetry reflected the works of Sir Walter Scott on Scottish subjects, which had a considerable influence both on British literary society and, bearing in mind Tod's Scottish ancestry, on Tod himself. Tod reconstructed Rajput history on the basis of the ancient texts and folklore of the Rajputs, although not everyone – for example, the polymath James Mill – accepted the historical validity of the native works. Tod also used philological techniques to reconstruct areas of Rajput history that were not even known to the Rajputs themselves, by drawing on works such as the religious texts known as Puranas. ## Publications Koditschek says that Tod "developed an interest in triangulating local culture, politics and history alongside his maps", and Metcalf believes that Tod "ordered [the Rajputs'] past as well as their present" while working in India. During his time in Rajputana, Tod was able to collect materials for his Annals and Antiquities of Rajast'han, which detailed the contemporary geography and history of Rajputana and Central India along with the history of the Rajput clans who ruled most of the area at that time. Described by historian Crispin Bates as "a romantic historical and anecdotal account" and by David Arnold, another historian, as a "travel narrative" by "one of India's most influential Romantic writers", the work was published in two volumes, in 1829 and 1832, and included illustrations and engravings by notable artists such as the Storers, Louis Haghe and either Edward or William Finden. He had to finance publication himself: sales of works on history had been moribund for some time and his name was not particularly familiar either at home or abroad. Original copies are now scarce, but they have been reprinted in many editions. The version published in 1920, which was edited by the orientalist and folklorist William Crooke, is significantly editorialised. Freitag has argued that the Annals "is first and foremost a story of the heroes of Rajasthan ... plotted in a certain way – there are villains, glorious acts of bravery, and a chivalric code to uphold". So dominant did Tod's work become in the popular and academic mind that they largely replaced the older accounts like Nainsi ri Khyat and even Prithvirãj Rãso. Tod had even used the Raso for his content. Kumar Singh, of the Anthropological Survey of India, has explained that the Annals were primarily based on "bardic accounts and personal encounters" and that they "glorified and romanticised the Rajput rulers and their country" but ignored other communities. One aspect of history that Tod studied in his Annals was the genealogy of the Chathis Rajkula (36 royal races), for the purpose of which he took advice on linguistic issues from a panel of pandits, including a Jain guru called Yati Gyanchandra. He said that he was "desirous of epitomising the chronicles of the martial races of Central and Western India" and that this necessitated study of their genealogy. The sources for this were Puranas held by the Rana of Udaipur. Tod also submitted archæological papers to the Royal Asiatic Society's Transactions series. He was interested in numismatics as well, and he discovered the first specimens of Bactrian and Indo-Greek coins from the Hellenistic period following the conquests of Alexander the Great, which were described in his books. These ancient kingdoms had been largely forgotten or considered semi-legendary, but Tod's findings confirmed the long-term Greek presence in Afghanistan and Punjab. Similar coins have been found in large quantities since his death. In addition to these writings, he produced a paper on the politics of Western India that was appended to the report of the House of Commons committee on Indian affairs, 1833. He had also taken notes on his journey to Bombay and collated them for another book, Travels in Western India. That book was published posthumously in 1839. ## Reception Criticism of the Annals came soon after publication. The anonymous author of the introduction to his posthumously published Travels states that > The only portions of this great work which have experienced anything like censure are those of a speculative character, namely, the curious Dissertation on the Feudal System of the Rajpoots, and the passages wherein the Author shows too visible a leaning towards hypotheses identifying persons, as well as customs, manners, and superstitions, in the East and the West, often on the slender basis of etymological affinities. Further criticism followed. Tod was an officer of the British imperial system, at that time the world's dominant power. Working in India, he attracted the attention of local rulers who were keen to tell their own tales of defiance against the Mughal empire. He heard what they told him but knew little of what they omitted. He was a soldier writing about a caste renowned for its martial abilities, and he was aided in his writings by the very people whom he was documenting. He had been interested in Rajput history prior to coming into contact with them in an official capacity, as administrator of the region in which they lived. These factors, says Freitag, contribute to why the Annals were "manifestly biased". Freitag argues that critics of Tod's literary output can be split into two groups: those who concentrate on his errors of fact and those who concentrate on his failures of interpretation. Tod relied heavily on existing Indian texts for his historical information and most of these are today considered unreliable. Crooke's introduction to Tod's 1920 edition of the Annals recorded that the old Indian texts recorded "the facts, not as they really occurred, but as the writer and his contemporaries supposed that they occurred." Crooke also says that Tod's "knowledge of ethnology was imperfect, and he was unable to reject the local chronicles of the Rajputs." More recently, Robin Donkin, a historian and geographer, has argued that, with one exception, "there are no native literary works with a developed sense of chronology, or indeed much sense of place, before the thirteenth century", and that researchers must rely on the accounts of travellers from outside the country. Tod's work relating to the genealogy of the Chathis Rajkula was criticised as early as 1872, when an anonymous reviewer in the Calcutta Review said that > It seems a pity that Tod's classification of 36 royal races should be accepted as anything but a purely ornamental arrangement, founded as it was on lists differing considerably both in the numbers and names of the tribes included in it, and containing at least two tribes, the Jats and Gujars, with whom the Rajputs do not even generally intermarry. Other examples of dubious interpretations made by Tod include his assertions regarding the ancestry of the Mohil Rajput clan when, even today, there is insufficient evidence to prove his point. He also mistook Rana Kumbha, a ruler of Mewar in the fifteenth century, as being the husband of the princess-saint Mira Bai and misrepresented the story of the queen Padmini. The founder of the Archaeological Survey of India, Alexander Cunningham, writing in 1885, noted that Tod had made "a whole bundle of mistakes" in relation to the dating of the Battle of Khanwa, and Crooke notes in his introduction to the 1920 edition that Tod's "excursions into philology are the diversions of a clever man, not of a trained scholar, but interested in the subject as an amateur." Michael Meister, an architectural historian and professor of South Asia Studies, has commented that Tod had a "general reputation for inaccuracy ... among Indologists by late in the nineteenth century", although the opinion of those Indologists sometimes prevented them from appreciating some of the useful aspects in his work. That reputation persists, with one modern writer, V. S. Srivastava of Rajasthan's Department of Archaeology and Museums, commenting that his works "are erroneous and misleading at places and they are to be used with caution as a part of sober history". In its time, Tod's work was influential even among officials of the government, although it was never formally recognised as authoritative. Andrea Major, who is a cultural and colonial historian, has commented on a specific example, that of the tradition of sati (ritual immolation of a widow): > The overly romanticised image of Rajasthan, and of the Rajput sati, that Tod presented came to be extremely influential in shaping British understanding of the rite's Rajput context. Though Tod does make a point of denouncing sati as a cruel and barbarous custom, his words are belied by his treatment of the subject in the rest of the Annals. ... Tod's image of the Rajput sati as the heroic equivalent of the Rajput warrior was one that caught the public imagination and which exhibited surprising longevity. The romantic nationalism that Tod espoused was used by Indian nationalist writers, especially those from the 1850s, as they sought to resist British control of the country. Works such as Jyotirindranath Tagore's Sarojini ba Chittor Akrama and Girishchandra Ghosh's Ananda Raho retold Tod's vision of the Rajputs in a manner to further their cause. Other works which drew their story from Tod's works include Padmini Upakhyan (1858) by Rangalal Banerjee and Krishna Kumari (1861) by Michael Madhusudan Dutt. In modern-day India, he is still revered by those whose ancestors he documented in good light. In 1997, the Maharana Mewar Charitable Foundation instituted an award named after Tod and intended it to be given to modern non-Indian writers who exemplified Tod's understanding of the area and its people. In other recognition of his work in Mewar Province, a village has been named Todgarh, and it has been claimed that Tod was in fact a Rajput as an outcome of the process of karma and rebirth. Freitag describes the opinion of the Rajput people > Tod, here, is not about history as such, but is a repository for "truth" and "splendor" ... The danger, therefore, is that the old received wisdom – evident and expressed in the work of people like Tod – will not be challenged at all, but will become much more deeply ingrained. Furthermore, Freitag points out that "the information age has also anointed Tod as the spokesman for Rajasthan, and the glories of India in general, as attested by the prominent quotations from him that appear in tourism related websites." ## Works Published works by James Tod include: - - - - - - - - - - ### Later editions - - - The Royal Asiatic Society is preparing a new edition of the Annals in celebration of the Society's bicentenary in 2023. A team of scholars are producing the original text of the first edition, together with a new introduction and annotations, and also a companion work that "will provide critical interpretive apparatus and contextual frames to aid in reading this iconic text." Containing "additional visual and archival material from the Society’s collections and beyond", it is to be co-published by the Society and Yale University Press in 2021. ## See also - History of Rajasthan

Burnley F.C.

Association football club in England

Burnley Football Club (/ˈbɜːrnli/) is a professional football club based in Burnley, Lancashire, England. The club competes in the EFL Championship, the second tier of English football, following relegation from the Premier League in 2023–24. Founded in 1882, Burnley were one of the first to become professional (in 1883) and subsequently put pressure on the Football Association to permit payments to players. They entered the FA Cup for the first time in 1885–86 and were one of the 12 founder members of the Football League in 1888–89. Burnley were the second, and are one of only five sides to have won all four professional divisions of English football. Burnley have been champions of England twice, in 1920–21 and 1959–60, have won the FA Cup once, in 1913–14, and have won the FA Charity Shield twice, in 1960 and 1973. They have been runners-up in the First Division twice, in 1919–20 and 1961–62, and FA Cup runners-up twice, in 1946–47 and 1961–62. During the 1920–21 season, Burnley embarked on a 30-match unbeaten league run, setting an English record. From the 1950s until the 1970s, under chairman Bob Lord, Burnley became renowned for their youth policy and scouting system, and were one of the first to set up a purpose-built training ground. When the team won the 1959–60 Football League, the town of Burnley—with 80,000 inhabitants—became one of the smallest to have an English first-tier champion. The team have played home games at Turf Moor since 1883, after they had moved from their original premises at Calder Vale. The club colours of claret and blue were adopted before the 1910–11 season in tribute to the then Football League champions Aston Villa. The club is nicknamed "The Clarets" because of the dominant colour of its home shirts. Burnley's current emblem is based on the town's coat of arms. The team have a long-standing rivalry with nearby club Blackburn Rovers, with whom they contest the East Lancashire Derby. Burnley's record appearance holder is Jerry Dawson, who made 569 appearances in a 22-year playing spell with the team, and their record goalscorer is George Beel with 188 goals. ## History ### Beginnings and the first major honours (1882–1946) The club was founded on 18 May 1882 by members of rugby team Burnley Rovers, who voted for a shift to association football, since several other sports clubs in the area had changed their codes to football. The suffix "Rovers" was dropped a few days later. The side won their first silverware in 1883: the Dr Dean's Cup, a knockout competition between amateur clubs in the Burnley area. By the end of the year, the club turned professional and signed many Scottish players. Burnley refused to join the Football Association (FA) and its FA Cup, since the association barred professional players. In 1884, Burnley led a group of 35 other clubs in the formation of the breakaway British Football Association (BFA) to challenge the FA's supremacy. The FA changed its rule in 1885, allowing professionalism, and Burnley made their first appearance in the FA Cup in 1885–86. In October 1886, Burnley's Turf Moor became the first professional ground to be visited by a member of the Royal Family, when Prince Albert Victor attended a friendly between Burnley and Bolton Wanderers. The club was among the twelve founders of the Football League in 1888–89 and one of the six based in Lancashire. In the second match, William Tait became the first player in history to score a league hat-trick, when his three goals gave Burnley their inaugural win in the competition. In 1889–90, they claimed their first Lancashire Cup, after beating local rivals Blackburn Rovers in the final. Burnley were relegated to the Second Division for the first time in 1896–97. The team won the division the next season; only two of thirty matches were lost before promotion was gained through a four-team play-off series called test matches, although the last game against First Division club Stoke was controversial. The tie finished 0–0 as both needed only a draw for a top flight place; it was later named "[t]he match without a shot at goal". Burnley were relegated again in 1899–1900 and found themselves at the centre of controversy when their goalkeeper, Jack Hillman, attempted to bribe opponents Nottingham Forest in the last match of the season. It is possibly the earliest recorded case of match fixing in football. The side continued to play in the Second Division and even finished in bottom place in 1902–03—but were re-elected—as the club got into financial difficulties. Harry Windle was named chairman in 1909, after which the club's finances turned around. The directors appointed John Haworth as the new manager in 1910, who changed the club's colours from green to the claret and blue of Aston Villa, the then First Division champions, as Haworth and the Burnley committee believed it might bring a change of fortune. In 1912–13, the side won promotion to the first tier; the following season, Burnley won their first major honour, beating Liverpool in the 1914 FA Cup final. Bert Freeman scored the only goal, as Burnley became the first club to defeat five top tier sides in one cup season. Tommy Boyle became the first captain to receive the trophy from a reigning monarch, King George V. The team finished second to West Bromwich Albion in 1919–20, before winning their first ever First Division championship in 1920–21. Burnley lost the opening three games but went unbeaten in the following 30 league matches, setting an English record. Nine seasons later, the team were relegated to the Second Division. They struggled in the second tier and avoided a further relegation in 1931–32 by two points. The years through to the outbreak of the Second World War were characterised by mid-table league finishes. ### Progressive and golden era (1946–1976) In the first season of post-war League football, Burnley gained promotion and reached the 1947 FA Cup final but were defeated by Charlton Athletic after extra time. The team's defence was nicknamed "The Iron Curtain", since they only conceded 29 goals in 42 league matches. Alan Brown was appointed manager in 1954, and Bob Lord chairman a year later. The club became one of the most progressive around under their tenures. Burnley were one of the first to set up a purpose-built training ground, at Gawthorpe, and they became renowned for their youth policy and scouting system, which yielded many young talents. In 1958, former Burnley player Harry Potts was appointed manager. His squad mainly revolved around the duo of captain Jimmy Adamson and Jimmy McIlroy, the team's playmaker. Potts often employed the then unfashionable 4–4–2 formation and he implemented a Total Football playing style. Burnley clinched a second First Division title in 1959–60. They had not topped the table until the last match was played out. The squad cost only £13,000 (equivalent to £ in 2024) in transfer fees—£8,000 on McIlroy in 1950 and £5,000 on left-back Alex Elder in 1959. The other players came from their youth academy. With 80,000 inhabitants, the town of Burnley became one of the smallest to have an English first tier champion. They travelled to the United States after the season ended to represent England in the International Soccer League, the first modern international American soccer tournament. The following season, Burnley played in European competition for the first time in the 1960–61 European Cup. They defeated former finalists Reims in the first round, but went out against Hamburger SV in the quarter-finals. The team finished the 1961–62 First Division as runners-up to newcomers Ipswich Town after winning only one of the last ten matches, and had a run to the 1962 FA Cup final but lost against Tottenham Hotspur. Adamson was named FWA Footballer of the Year, however, with McIlroy as runner-up. The maximum wage in the Football League was abolished in 1961, which meant that clubs from small towns like Burnley could no longer compete financially with sides from bigger towns and cities. The controversial departure of McIlroy to Stoke City in 1963 and Adamson's retirement in 1964 also damaged the club's fortunes. Burnley retained their place in the First Division throughout the decade, however, finishing third in 1965–66 to qualify for the 1966–67 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. Potts was replaced by Adamson as manager in 1970. Adamson hailed his squad as the "Team of the Seventies", but he was unable to halt the slide as relegation followed in 1970–71. Burnley won the Second Division title in 1972–73, and were invited to play in the 1973 FA Charity Shield, where they emerged as winners against Manchester City. In 1975, the team were victims of one of the great FA Cup shocks of all time when Wimbledon, then in the Southern League, won 1–0 at Turf Moor. Adamson left the club in January 1976, and relegation from the First Division followed later that year. During this period, a drop in home attendances combined with an enlarged debt forced Burnley to sell star players such as Martin Dobson and Leighton James, which caused a rapid decline. ### Near oblivion and recovery (1976–2020) The team were relegated to the Third Division for the first time in 1979–80. Under the management of former Burnley player Brian Miller, they returned to the second tier as champions in 1981–82. However, this return was short-lived and lasted only one year. Managerial changes continued to be made in a search for success; Miller was replaced by Frank Casper in early 1983, he by John Bond before the 1983–84 season and Bond himself by John Benson a season later. Bond was the first manager since Frank Hill (1948–1954) without a previous playing career at the club. He was criticised by the fans for signing expensive players increasing Burnley's debt, and for selling the young talents Lee Dixon, Brian Laws and Trevor Steven. Benson was in charge when Burnley were relegated to the Fourth Division for the first time at the end of the 1984–85 season. The team avoided relegation to the Football Conference, the highest level of non-League football, on the last day in 1986–87, after they won against Orient and their rivals drew or lost. In 1988, Burnley played Wolverhampton Wanderers in the final of the Associate Members' Cup but lost 2–0. The match was attended by 80,000 people, a record for a match between two sides from the fourth tier. The team won the Fourth Division in 1991–92 under manager Jimmy Mullen. He had succeeded Casper in October 1991 and won his first nine league matches as manager. By winning the fourth tier, Burnley became only the second club to win all four professional divisions of English football, after Wolverhampton Wanderers. Burnley won the Second Division play-offs in 1993–94 and gained promotion to the second tier. Relegation followed after one season, and in 1997–98 only a last-day victory over Plymouth Argyle prevented relegation back into the fourth tier. Under manager Stan Ternent, Burnley finished second in 1999–2000 and won promotion to the second tier. In early 2002, financial problems caused by the collapse of ITV Digital brought the club close to administration. Ternent was sacked in 2004, after he avoided relegation with a squad composed of several loaned players and some players who were not entirely fit. The 2008–09 campaign, with Owen Coyle in charge, ended with promotion to the Premier League. Sheffield United were defeated in the Championship play-off final, which meant a return to the top flight after 33 years. Burnley also reached the semi-final of the League Cup for the first time in over 25 years but were beaten on aggregate by Tottenham in the last minutes of the second leg. Promotion made the town of Burnley one of the smallest to host a Premier League club. The team started the season well and became the first newly promoted side in the competition to win their first four home games. However, Coyle left the club in January 2010 to manage local rivals Bolton Wanderers. He was replaced by former Burnley player Brian Laws, but the team's form plummeted and they were relegated after a single season. Sean Dyche was appointed manager in October 2012. In his first full season in charge, Dyche guided Burnley back to the Premier League in 2013–14 on a tight budget and with a small squad. The team went down after one season but won the Championship title on their return in 2015–16, ending the season with a run of 23 league games undefeated. In 2017, the club completed construction of Barnfield Training Centre—the replacement of Gawthorpe—with Dyche being involved in the training ground's design. Burnley finished seventh in 2017–18, which meant qualification for the 2018–19 UEFA Europa League and a return to European football after 51 years. The team failed to reach the group stage, as they were eliminated in the play-off round by Greek club Olympiacos. ### Foreign owners (2020–present) In December 2020, American investment company ALK Capital acquired an 84% stake in Burnley for £170 million. It was the first time the club was run by anyone other than local businessmen and Burnley supporters. In 2021–22, Burnley were relegated back to the Championship after they lost on the final matchday and finished in 18th place. In June 2022, the Belgian Vincent Kompany was appointed Burnley's manager, becoming the first person from outside the British Isles to manage the club. During his first months in charge, he signed 16 players—mostly young and foreign—as he rebuilt the squad on a budget. Kompany also implemented a possession-based, attacking style of play. Burnley secured promotion back to the Premier League with seven matches remaining—a Championship record—before winning the Championship title following a 1–0 victory at local rivals Blackburn Rovers. The following season, Burnley were relegated again from the Premier League, finishing 19th with a club record low tally of 24 points. Kompany was criticised for mainly buying inexperienced players, resulting in an uncompetitive squad, and for his "tactical naivety" and "stubbornness". Shortly afterwards, however, Kompany went to Bayern Munich for a fee of £10.2 million, which made him one of the most expensive managers in history. ## Club identity ### Kits and colours In the early years, Burnley used various kit designs and colours. Throughout the first eight years, there were various permutations of blue and white, the colours of the club's forerunners Burnley Rovers. Before the start of the 1890–91 season, the club adopted an all-blue shirt, but changed it to all-white mid-season. After several years of claret and amber stripes, for much of the mid-1890s a combination of black with amber was used, although the team wore a shirt with pink and white stripes during the 1894–95 season. Between 1897 and 1900, the club used an all-red shirt and from 1900 until 1910 it wore an all-green jersey. In 1910, Burnley changed their colours to claret and blue, which they have had for most of their history, save for a spell in white shirts during the second half of the 1930s and the Second World War. The adoption of the claret and blue combination paid homage to Football League champions Aston Villa, who wore those colours. Burnley's committee and manager John Haworth believed it might bring a change of fortune. The club decided to re-register its colours as claret and blue in 1946, partly due to readers' letters to the Burnley Express. Burnley's jerseys were manufactured by local companies until 1975, when Umbro became the first to have its logo on the club's shirt. Since 1975, the team have had a variety of kit manufacturers and shirt sponsors. The club's first kit sponsor was POCO in 1982, while the mobile game Golf Clash became its first sleeve sponsor in 2017. ### Crest Burnley's first use of a crest was in December 1887, when they wore the royal arms on the shirt. Prince Albert Victor had watched the team play against Bolton Wanderers at Turf Moor in October 1886—the first visit to a professional football ground by a member of the royal family. To commemorate the visit, the club received a set of white jerseys featured with a blue sash and embellished with the royal coat of arms. The crest was regularly worn on the shirts until 1895, when it disappeared. During the 1914 FA Cup final, watched by King George V, it featured again on the kits. From 1914, the team played in unadorned shirts, although they wore the coat of arms of Burnley during the 1934–35 FA Cup semi-final and the 1947 FA Cup final. After winning the First Division in 1960, Burnley were allowed to wear the town's crest on their shirts. From 1969 to 1975, the team bore the letters "BFC" running downwards from left to right. In 1975, the club adopted a horizontal "BFC" cypher lettered in gold. Burnley used a designed badge with elements from the town and the club on their home shirts from 1979, before they adopted a simple horizontal "B.F.C." in 1983, lettered in white. In 1987, the club reinstated the crest used from 1979 to 1983. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1959–60 First Division title win in 2009, Burnley reintroduced the logo used from 1960 to 1969. The following season, its Latin motto "Pretiumque et Causa Laboris" (lit. 'The prize and the cause of [our] labour') was replaced with the inscription "Burnley Football Club". In 2023, Burnley coloured the elements in white and placed them on a claret shield; from the 2024–25 season, the crest appeared on the club's home kits. The club's current badge is based on the town's coat of arms. The stork at the top of the crest refers to the Starkie family, who were prominent in the Burnley area. In its mouth it holds a Lacy knot, of the de Lacy family, who held Burnley in the Middle Ages. The stork stands on a hill and cotton plants—which represents the town's cotton heritage. Beneath, the hand represents the town's motto "Hold to the Truth", derived from the Towneley family. The two bees refer to the town's hard work ethic, while the lion represents royalty. The chevron is a reference to the River Brun, which runs through the town. ## Stadium The team have played their home games at Turf Moor since February 1883, which replaced their original premises at Calder Vale. The Turf Moor site has been used for sport since at least 1843, when Burnley Cricket Club moved to the area. In 1883, they invited Burnley to a field adjacent to the cricket pitch. Both clubs have remained there since, and only Lancashire rivals Preston North End have continuously occupied their stadium—Deepdale—for longer. The ground originally consisted of only a pitch and the initial grandstand was not built until 1885. In 1888, the first league match at Turf Moor saw Burnley emerge as 4–1 winners over Bolton Wanderers, Fred Poland netting the first league goal at the stadium. Turf Moor's capacity was increased to 50,000 under the chairman Harry Windle during the 1910s. The ground hosted its only FA Cup semi-final in 1922, between Huddersfield Town and Notts County, and five years later it hosted its only full international match, between England and Wales for the British Home Championship. From the end of the Second World War until the mid-1960s, crowds in the stadium averaged in the 20,000–35,000 range, and Burnley averaged a club-record attendance of 33,621 in the 1947–48 First Division. The attendance record for a single match was already set in 1924 against Huddersfield Town in an FA Cup third round tie, when 54,775 spectators attended. In 1960, in an FA Cup fifth round replay game against Bradford City, there was an official attendance of 52,850. Some of the gates were broken down, however, and many uncounted fans poured into the ground. Turf Moor has a capacity of 21,944 and consists of four stands: the North Stand (formerly the Longside), the Jimmy McIlroy Stand (formerly the Bee Hole End), the Bob Lord Stand, and the Cricket Field Stand for home and away fans. Turf Moor's field had a slope until 1974, when the pitch was raised to minimise it. During the mid-1990s, the ground underwent further refurbishment when the Longside and Bee Hole End terraces were replaced by all-seater stands as a result of the Taylor Report. In 2019, the club built two corner stands for disabled home supporters between the Jimmy McIlroy and both the North and Bob Lord Stands to meet the Accessible Stadium Guide regulations. ## Supporters and rivalries ### Supporters Burnley's supporters are mainly drawn from East Lancashire and West Yorkshire. The club is one of the best supported sides in English football per capita, with average attendances of around 21,000 in the Premier League in a town of approximately 78,000 inhabitants. Burnley have numerous supporters' clubs across the United Kingdom and overseas. The club's fans have had a long-standing friendship with supporters of the Dutch team Helmond Sport since the 1990s. Several Burnley and Helmond fans regularly make an overseas journey to visit each other's matches. For 2022–23 and 2023–24, Helmond Sport adopted a claret and blue away kit in tribute to Burnley. A frequently sung chant since the early 1970s is "No Nay Never", an adaptation of the song "The Wild Rover", which has lyrics to offend main rivals Blackburn Rovers. In the early 1980s, a hooligan firm known as the Suicide Squad emerged from within Burnley's fanbase. The group later featured on the 2006 hooligan documentary series The Real Football Factories. In 2011, 12 members were sentenced to jail for a total of 32 years, after a high-profile incident with Blackburn Rovers supporters in 2009. The firm disbanded after the verdict. Notable Burnley fans have included football pioneer Jimmy Hogan, who was a regular attendee at Turf Moor; journalist Alastair Campbell, who has been regularly involved in events with the club; and cricketer James Anderson, who also worked in Burnley's ticket office on a part-time basis. King Charles III is also a supporter of the club, as is the South African cardinal Wilfrid Napier. In 2019, Burnley fan Scott Cunliffe was honoured by the UEFA with the \#EqualGame Award "for his work as a role model highlighting diversity, inclusion and accessibility in football"; he ran to every away Premier League ground during Burnley's 2018–19 campaign and raised more than £55,000 for Premier League clubs' community trusts and community projects in Burnley. A popular drink served at home matches since the First World War is "Béné & Hot"—the French liqueur Bénédictine topped up with hot water. The East Lancashire Regiment soldiers acquired a taste for the drink while stationed at the birthplace of the beverage in Fécamp, Normandy, during the war. They drank it with hot water to keep warm in the trenches, and the surviving soldiers later returned to the East Lancashire area with the liqueur. In excess of 30 bottles are sold at each home game, which makes the club one of the world's biggest sellers of Bénédictine; Turf Moor is the only British football ground to sell it. ### Rivalries Burnley's main rivals are Blackburn Rovers, with whom they contest the East Lancashire derby, named after the region both clubs hail from. Games between these sides from mill towns are also known under the name "Cotton Mills derby". Both are founder members of the Football League and have won the First Division and the FA Cup. The two clubs are separated by only 14 miles (23 km) and besides the geographical proximity, they also have a long-standing history of rivalry; the earliest competitive clash was a Football League match in 1888. Four years earlier, however, they had met for the first time in a friendly, "with considerable pride at stake". Burnley hold the better head-to-head record, as the side have won 44 games to Blackburn's 41. Burnley's closest geographic rivals are actually Accrington Stanley, but as they have never competed at the same level—although defunct club Accrington did—there is no significant rivalry between them. Other rivalries include those with nearby clubs Blackpool, Bolton Wanderers and Preston North End. Burnley also share a Roses rivalry with West Yorkshire sides Bradford City and Leeds United. The team contested heated matches with Halifax Town, Plymouth Argyle, Rochdale and Stockport County in the 1980s and 1990s during their time in the lower leagues, although feelings of animosity were mainly one-sided; according to the Football Fans Census in 2003, Halifax and Stockport supporters considered Burnley to be their main rivals. ## Players ### First-team squad ### Out on loan ### Academy ## Management ### Football management Source: ### Managers Burnley-born Harry Bradshaw was Burnley's first manager—he was appointed in August 1894—and was the first to win a league title with the club, taking them to the top of the Second Division at the end of the 1897–98 season. John Haworth was the first manager in the club's history to win a major honour, the FA Cup in 1914; under Haworth, Burnley also became champions of England for the first time in 1920–21. Harry Potts led the club to its second First Division title during the 1959–60 campaign. Jimmy Adamson (1972–73 Second Division), Brian Miller (1981–82 Third Division), Jimmy Mullen (1991–92 Fourth Division), Sean Dyche (2015–16 Football League Championship), and Vincent Kompany (2022–23 EFL Championship) also led Burnley to league titles. ### Owners In 1897, the club incorporated as a limited company. From their establishment until 2020, Burnley were run by local businessmen and supporters. In December 2020, Velocity Sports Partners (VSP), the sports investment arm of American management firm ALK Capital, acquired an 84% stake in Burnley for £170 million. Alan Pace, managing partner of ALK Capital, subsequently replaced Mike Garlick as the club's chairman. ALK borrowed much of the takeover money, and the loan debts were transferred to the club. As a result of this leveraged takeover, Burnley went from being debt-free to being saddled with debts of around £100 million, at interest rates of about eight per cent. In May 2023, J. J. Watt, a retired defensive end in American football's National Football League, and his wife, former United States women's national soccer team international Kealia Watt, were announced as new minority investors. In August 2023, YouTube group Dude Perfect also became minority investors in the club. ### Board of directors Source: ### Chairmen The following have been chairman of the club's board of directors: ## Honours Burnley were the second, and are one of only five teams to have won all four professional divisions of English football, along with Wolverhampton Wanderers, Preston North End, Sheffield United and Portsmouth. The club's honours include the following: League - First Division (level 1) - Champions: 1920–21, 1959–60 - Runners-up: 1919–20, 1961–62 - Second Division / Championship (level 2) - Champions: 1897–98, 1972–73, 2015–16, 2022–23 - Promoted: 1912–13, 1946–47, 2013–14 - Play-off winners: 2009 - Third Division / Second Division (level 3) - Champions: 1981–82 - Promoted: 1999–2000 - Play-off winners: 1994 - Fourth Division (level 4) - Champions: 1991–92 Cup - FA Cup - Winners: 1913–14 - Runners-up: 1946–47, 1961–62 - FA Charity Shield - Winners: 1960 (shared), 1973 - Runners-up: 1921 - Texaco Cup - Runners-up: 1973–74 - Anglo-Scottish Cup - Winners: 1978–79 - Associate Members' Cup - Runners-up: 1987–88 Regional - Lancashire Cup - Winners (13): 1889–90, 1914–15, 1949–50, 1951–52, 1959–60, 1960–61, 1961–62, 1964–65, 1965–66, 1969–70, 1971–72, 1992–93, 2022–23 ## Records and statistics The record for the most first team appearances in all competitions for Burnley is held by goalkeeper Jerry Dawson, who played 569 games between 1907 and 1929. The club's top goal scorer is George Beel, who scored 188 goals from 1923 to 1932. In 1962, Jimmy Adamson won the FWA Footballer of the Year award, the first and to date only time a Burnley player achieved this. Willie Irvine became top goal scorer in the first tier in 1965–66 with 29 goals, a unique feat in the club's history. Jimmy McIlroy is the most capped player while at the club, as he made 51 appearances for Northern Ireland between 1951 and 1962. The first Burnley player to play in a full international match was John Yates, who took to the field for England against Ireland in March 1889. He scored a hat-trick but was never called up again. In January 1957, 17-year-old Ian Lawson netted a record four goals on his debut against Chesterfield in the FA Cup third round. The youngest player to play for the club is Tommy Lawton, who was aged 16 years and 174 days on his debut against Doncaster Rovers in the Second Division on 28 March 1936. His debut made him the then youngest centre-forward ever to play in the Football League. The oldest player is Len Smelt, who played his last match aged 41 years and 132 days against Arsenal in the First Division on 18 April 1925. The club's largest win in league football was a 9–0 victory against Darwen in the 1891–92 Football League. Burnley's largest victories in the FA Cup have been 9–0 wins over Crystal Palace (1908–09), New Brighton (1956–57) and Penrith (1984–85). The largest defeat is an 11–0 loss to Darwen Old Wanderers in the 1885–86 FA Cup first round, when Burnley fielded their reserve side, as most professionals were still prohibited entry due to rules of the FA that season. The team's longest unbeaten run in the league was between 6 September 1920 and 25 March 1921, to which they remained unbeaten for 30 games on their way to the First Division title. It stood as the longest stretch without defeat in a single English professional league season until Arsenal bettered it in 2003–04. The club's highest home attendance is 54,775, for an FA Cup third round match against Huddersfield Town on 23 February 1924; Burnley's record home attendance in the league is 52,869, for a First Division game against Blackpool on 11 October 1947. The highest transfer fee received is the £31.5 million from Tottenham Hotspur for Wilson Odobert in 2024. The highest transfer fee paid by Burnley is the £16.1 million paid to Basel for striker Zeki Amdouni in 2023. Bob Kelly broke the world transfer record in 1925, when he moved for a fee of £6,500 (equivalent to £ in 2024) from Burnley to Sunderland.

Jane Grigson

English cookery writer (1928–1990)

Jane Grigson (born Heather Mabel Jane McIntire; 13 March 1928 – 12 March 1990) was an English cookery writer. In the latter part of the 20th century she was the author of the food column for The Observer and wrote numerous books about European cuisines and traditional British dishes. Her work proved influential in promoting British food. Born in Gloucestershire, Grigson was raised in Sunderland, North East England, before studying at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1953 she became an editorial assistant at the publishing company Rainbird, McLean, where she was the research assistant for the poet and writer Geoffrey Grigson. They soon began a relationship which lasted until his death in 1985; they had one daughter, Sophie. Jane worked as a translator of Italian works, and co-wrote books with her husband before writing Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery in 1967. The book was well received and, on its strength, Grigson gained her position at The Observer after a recommendation by the food writer Elizabeth David. Grigson continued to write for The Observer until 1990; she also wrote works that focused mainly on British food—such as Good Things (1971), English Food (1974), Food With the Famous (1979) and The Observer Guide to British Cookery (1984)—or on key ingredients—such as Fish Cookery (1973), The Mushroom Feast (1975), Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book (1978), Jane Grigson's Fruit Book (1982) and Exotic Fruits and Vegetables (1986). She was awarded the John Florio Prize for Italian translation in 1966, and her food books won three Glenfiddich Food and Drink Awards and two André Simon Memorial Prizes. Grigson was active in political lobbying, campaigning against battery farming and for animal welfare, food provenance and smallholders; in 1988 she took John MacGregor, then the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, to task after salmonella was found in British eggs. Her writing put food into its social and historical context with a range of sources that includes poetry, novels and the cookery writers of the Industrial Revolution era, including Hannah Glasse, Elizabeth Raffald, Maria Rundell and Eliza Acton. Through her writing she changed the eating habits of the British, making many forgotten dishes popular once again. ## Biography ### Early life; 1928–1965 Grigson was born Heather Mabel Jane McIntire on 13 March 1928 in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, the daughter of George and Doris McIntire. George was a solicitor and the deputy town clerk of Gloucester; Doris was an artist. Grigson later said that home was where she "first learnt about good English food". After he had been involved in the closure of an abattoir, George gave up eating meat. When Grigson was four the family moved to Sunderland, North East England. She picked up a trace of a north-east accent that remained with her, and what the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls a "quietly left-wing" political viewpoint. During the Second World War, Sunderland was a target of Luftwaffe bombs, so Grigson and her sister Mary were sent to Casterton School, a boarding school in Westmorland. She then gained a place at Newnham College, Cambridge to read English literature. After university Grigson travelled around Italy, and lived for three months in Florence. On her return to the UK she became the assistant to Bryan Robertson, the curator at the Heffer Gallery in Cambridge; an interest in painting, silver and textiles led her to apply for positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, but she was unsuccessful. She worked in a junior capacity in an art gallery on Bond Street; she thought the watercolours were old-fashioned, and she later said that "I wished to rip everything off the walls and hang up [works by] Ben Nicholson". She began writing art reviews for the Sunderland Echo, covering subjects such as fine pottery, the Renaissance and the work of Clarkson Frederick Stanfield. In 1953 she became an editorial assistant at the publishing company Rainbird, McLean, a position she held for two years, during which time she was the research assistant for the poet and writer Geoffrey Grigson. He was married, and twenty-three years older than she, but they began a relationship and shortly afterwards she moved to the Farmhouse at Broad Town, Wiltshire, which had been his family home since 1945. He and his wife did not divorce; his estranged wife refused to grant him one. Instead, in the mid-1950s, McIntire changed her name by deed poll to Jane Grigson. In 1959 the Grigsons had a daughter, Sophie, who later became a food writer and television presenter. Shortly after the birth, the couple purchased a cave-cottage in Trôo, France, and it was there, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, that Grigson developed a conviction that "because cooking is a central part of life it should be as carefully written about as any other art form". Grigson worked for ten years as a translator from Italian, and in 1959 she wrote a new translation of Carlo Collodi's fairy tale The Adventures of Pinocchio, which she thought was "the only version of Pinocchio to transmit the liveliness and toughness of the original". She translated Gian Antonio Cibotto's 1962 work Scano Boa in 1963 and, the same year, also translated Cesare Beccaria's 1764 work Dei delitti e delle pene; the work was published as Of Crimes and Punishments, and it won the 1966 John Florio Prize for Italian translation. Jane and Geoffrey then worked on a joint project aimed at juveniles that looked at the meaning of 65 artworks in the context of their time and their enduring impact; Shapes and Stories was published in 1964. The Times and The Guardian both thought it "original and beautiful". A follow-up work, Shapes and Adventures, was published in 1967. ### Mid-1960s to mid-1970s In the mid-1960s Grigson was persuaded by her friend, Adey Horton, to co-author a book on pork. Horton dropped out part-way through the project and, in 1967, Grigson published Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery. The reviewer in The Times commented, "the research is detailed, the recounting lively, the information fascinating, the recipes complete from head to tail." In a tour d'horizon of cookery books in 1977, Elizabeth David called the book "A valuable work on the salting, curing and cooking of pork ... as practised by French households as well as by professional charcutiers", and commented on its "authentic recipes, practical approach and good writing". On the strength of Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery—and a subsequent lunch—David recommended Grigson to The Observer as their food writer; Grigson began her weekly column with the paper the following year. For her first article she wrote about strawberries, but was unsure of how to approach the topic. Her husband suggested "we'll find out what the strawberry has meant to people, what they have done to it, how they have developed it and so on". She used the same approach for most of her future columns. Jay Rayner, one of her successors in the role, writes that Grigson "established ... [the] newspaper's reputation as a publication that was serious about food". Nigel Slater, another successor, considers her writing "legendary". She held the position until 1990. Grigson and her husband would spend three months a year in Trôo—sometimes visiting twice a year—writing there and at their home in Broad Town, Wiltshire. While in France she "delighted in proving to ... [her] French friends that British cooking could be every bit as good as theirs", according to her daughter. Her articles in The Observer provided the basis of further books; in 1971 her columns provided material for Good Things, which she introduced by saying it "is not a manual of cookery, but a book about enjoying food". Harold Wilshaw, the food writer for The Guardian, thought it a "magnificent book ... worth the money for the chapter on prunes alone" The Times considers it "perhaps the most popular of her books". Nika Hazelton, reviewing it for The New York Times writes that it is "a delight to read and to cook from. The author is literate, her food interesting but unaffected". The chef and food writer Samin Nosrat lists Good Things as one of "the classic cookbooks that shaped my career as a chef and writer", alongside Jane Grigson's Fruit Book and Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book. In 1973 Grigson was invited by the Wine and Food Society to write Fish Cookery. According to the food writer Geraldene Holt, it was not common in Britain at that time for fish to be the main course at a formal meal; by the time Grigson came around to writing the updated edition in 1993, attitudes and tastes had changed, and a wider variety of fish was available for purchase. Grigson opened her 1974 work, English Food with "English cooking—both historically and in the mouth—is a great deal more varied and delectable than our masochistic temper in this matter allows". On reading the book, Roger Baker, reviewing in The Times, described Grigson as "probably the most engaging food writer to emerge during the last few years"; he thought the book had "a sense of fun, a feeling for history, a very readable style and a love of simple, unaffected cooking". The Times later described English Food as being "a work to set alongside Elizabeth David's books on French and Italian cuisine". Holt records that with the book, "Grigson had become a crusader for the oft-maligned cooking of the British Isles"; she became an early critic of battery farming and passionate about the provenance of food. The same year, Grigson was a contributor to The World Atlas of Food. The book was described by the food writer Elizabeth Ray as "by its nature both expensive and superficial", and by Baker as containing "hectic catch-lines on every page ... a thinness in the writing". Over the next three years Grigson returned to producing books dealing with key categories of food: two booklets, Cooking Carrots and Cooking Spinach were published in 1975, as was The Mushroom Feast. The last of these was described by Kirkus Reviews as "A beautiful collection of recipes and culinary lore"; the reviewer for The Observer noted that "Grigson gives you more than recipes. She takes you down the byways of folklore and literature". Grigson described it as "the record of one family's pursuit of mushrooms, both wild and cultivated, over the last twenty years". Unlike many of her other books it owed little to her previously published articles, but drew on her family's experiences as mushroom enthusiasts. The idea of writing a book on fungi came to her after a friend in Trôo introduced the Grigsons to mushroom gathering. For him, as for other locals, "mushroom-hunting was part of the waste-nothing philosophy he had inherited from his farming peasant ancestors. ... mushrooms have long been accepted by chefs of the high cooking tradition in France: there is no question of allowing them to go to waste as we do so unregardingly". She had gradually concluded that few available books did justice to mushrooms and other fungi: "Most cookery books—always excepting Plats du Jour by Patience Gray and Primrose Boyd—are useless". Reviewing the first edition, Skeffington Ardron wrote in The Guardian that choosing between the many recipes "will drive you wild, for there is here such a magnificent collection" ranging from simple economical dishes to "the extravagant, impossible, ridiculous Poulard Derbe with its champagne, foie gras and truffles". ### 1978 to 1985 In 1978 Grigson wrote Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book. Reviewing the book in the first edition of Petits Propos Culinaires, Jane Davidson wrote "Erudition and commonsense are not always bedfellows. In this book they snuggle happily together. ... it is light on the eye and invigorating to the imagination." Writing about the first edition, the food writer Robin McDouall said in The Times that the book was "worthy to stand on the shelf by her Fish Cookery and her Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery—praise could go no higher". He commented that the cuisines of many countries were covered, but the main ones were French, Greek, Turkish and Arab. In The New York Times Mimi Sheraton wrote that the book was a "large, handsome volume [with] helpful shopping, storing and cooking information on all the vegetables included in recipes, and the range of dishes is worldwide if strongest on European specialties". Sheraton remarked on the "especially good lentil recipes, wonderful fragrant and bracing soups, and intriguing preparations for lesserknown vegetables such as chayote squash, Jerusalem artichokes and hop shoots". Wilshaw, reviewing the paperback edition for The Guardian, praised Grigson's "warm and erudite style ... an encyclopaedic account of vegetables, their history and their place in modern kitchens". In 1986 The Guardian polled its readers to discover their most indispensable cookery books; Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book took the second place, behind Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking but ahead of other books by David and by Madhur Jaffrey, Delia Smith, Claudia Roden and Julia Child. In July 1978 Grigson was interviewed for Desert Island Discs by Roy Plomley. Among her selections were poetry recordings by her husband, one of his books—Notes from an Odd Country—and, as her luxury item, a typewriter and paper. Following a series of articles Grigson wrote for her column in The Observer, she published Food With the Famous in 1979, a look at the food eaten by various figures through history. The critic for Kirkus Reviews thought "Grigson's leisurely quotation-studded essays are almost too tantalizing; eventually one begins to miss the factual data (accounts of recipe-adaptations, etc.)" while the reviewer for the Birmingham Daily Post described it as "a charming book about food, rather than a cookery book". From late 1979 to 1980 the chef Anne Willan wrote "French Cookery School", a sixteen-part series in The Observer. The series was collated into a book, The Observer French Cookery School, with Grigson adding information on French cuisine. In 1981 Grigson was a participant at the second Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, along with Elizabeth David. The symposium was founded by the food historian Alan Davidson and the social historian Theodore Zeldin. Grigson published Jane Grigson's Fruit Book in 1982, a companion book to her Vegetable Book. Prue Leith, the cookery editor for The Guardian, said the book was "a great read and a vital leg-up for the cook temporarily bereft of ideas beyond apple pie. ... There are literary, historical, and travel anecdotes, interleaved with solid information". Reviewing the book in the New York Times, Sheraton wrote that the book was "readable and spirited, with ... [a] diverse combination of practical information, enticing recipes and romantic lore and food history, all tempered with humor and goodwill". In 1983 Grigson published The Observer Guide to European Cookery. The paper sent her on what she called "a cook's tour" of European countries in early 1981 to explore and write about their cuisines. Political difficulties and a limited timetable obliged her to miss many countries; those she visited and wrote about were Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Britain, the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Austria and Hungary. Russia had seemed likely to be omitted, because of the inefficiency and obstructiveness of Soviet officials, but Pamela Davidson, a friend based in Moscow, stepped into the breach, producing "the most informative part of the book, which tells us exactly what Soviet citizens eat and give their friends". Grigson's experiences were published as a ten-week series in the paper before being published in book form. Leith, in The Guardian, wrote that, despite reading the columns in the newspaper, she was able to "read them again with undiminished pleasure". A sixty-minute video was produced by The Observer showing Grigson preparing six of the book's recipes. Shona Crawford Poole, reviewing for The Times, thought it showed "Grigson's agreeable manner ... allied to great good sense". Grigson's next book, The Observer Guide to British Cookery, was published in 1984, for which Grigson and her husband travelled round the UK to sample local fare. In her introduction she said "I think it helps if we try to consider the origins of our food, and its appropriateness." Her aim for the book, was to "make us all think out the best way of eating good honest food, seemly food if you like, at levels and in a style that are recognisably and proudly our own". Alan Davidson, reviewing for Petits Propos Culinaires, observed Grigson's long-held interest in British food, and thought "the quality of her writing shines as brightly as ever". The journalist Digby Anderson, reviewing in The Spectator, stated "This is 'expanded from her articles for The Observer Magazine'. Thus it is not pure Grigson but has additives, preservatives and a good deal of artificial colouring", although he allowed "There are splendid recipes, good general advice and useful tips in British Cooking". ### 1985 to 1990 Geoffrey Grigson died in November 1985. Jane said that when married, "each day was vivid", "he made every ordinary day exciting and worth living". The following year she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. In a letter to the writer Colin Spencer soon afterwards, she said "When I first got cancer ... I welcomed the thought of joining him in the churchyard." After medical treatment, the cancer went into remission. Not long after Geoffrey's death, Jane Grigson began to take an active role in food lobbying. She campaigned for animal welfare, she promoted food provenance and smallholders. It was a subject she had long thought important; in 1971, in the introduction to Good Food, she wrote: > The encouragement of fine food is not greed or gourmandise; it can be seen as an aspect of the anti-pollution movement in that it indicates concern for the quality of the environment. This is not the limited concern of a few cranks. Small and medium-sized firms, feeling unable to compete with the cheap products of the giants, turn to producing better food. A courageous pig-breeder in Suffolk starts a cooked pork shop in the high charcuterie style; people in many parts of the country run restaurants specialising in local food; I notice in grocer's shops in our small town the increasing appearance of bags of strong flour and the prominence given to eggs direct from the farm. In 1988 Grigson took John MacGregor, then the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, to task after salmonella was found in British eggs. She told McGregor "I advise action, not just another research committee. You may get away with allowing agribusiness to poison our drinking water; it cannot get away with eggs". She also became involved in the opposition to development around Avebury, the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Grigson's last major work was Exotic Fruits and Vegetables, published in 1986. The impetus for the 128-page volume came from the artist Charlotte Knox, who offered the publisher, Jonathan Cape, a portfolio of coloured drawings of exotic fruits and vegetables. Grigson's "idea was to make an album in 19th-century style with plates vivid enough for people to be excited by them, to want to pick them off the page and try them for themselves." Grigson's cancer returned in the middle of 1989 and she underwent chemotherapy in September that year; she died on 12 March 1990 at Broad Town. She was buried in the cemetery of Christ Church, the local church, alongside Geoffrey. A memorial service for Grigson was held at St Margaret's, Westminster in June 1990; the speakers providing the eulogies were the food writers Derek Cooper and Paul Levy. ## Broadcasting Unlike Elizabeth David, who avoided broadcasting, Grigson appeared from time to time on radio and television. In 1984 she joined Prue Leith, Anton Mosimann, Albert Roux and two others in the Channel 4 television series Take Six Cooks, in which well-known cooks dined together at the Dorchester Hotel in London and each then presented their thoughts on and recipes for a particular course or dishes. Leith presented hors d'oeuvres, Mosimann fish, Roux meat and Grigson vegetables. In a book associated with the series eight of her recipes were included. As was her usual practice, she interspersed classic recipes—carrots à la Forestière and peas in the French style with spring onions and lettuce—with less well known dishes such as artichokes stuffed with a purée of broad beans. On BBC radio she took part in interviews and panel discussions giving her views on ingredients and advice on techniques, and in a 1989 programme she presented a portrait of Elizabeth Raffald and her 18th-century recipes. On BBC television she extolled her heroes—Elizabeth David, Henry James and Geoffrey Grigson, demonstrated how to roast and stuff a goose, went in search of Britain's best fresh produce, gave advice for the health-conscious about cooking vegetables, and joined other cooks at the Savoy Hotel to supervise show-business celebrities attempting to cook classic dishes. ## Works ### 1960s #### Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (1967) Grigson's first book about food and cookery was Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery, published by Michael Joseph in 1967. After a brief introduction outlining the history of the pig in European agriculture and cuisine, the main text begins with a "Picnic guide to the charcutier's shop", in which the author details the pork products available in a good French charcuterie. They include dishes ready to eat, such as rillettes; pâtés; cooked and cured ham (such as jambons de York and de Bayonne); and cooked sausages of the salami and other types. Dishes that require cooking include pigs' trotters; sausages including andouillettes; black puddings; and, more expensive, boudins blancs. Also listed are cuts of fresh pork, from head to tail (tête and queue de porc). Later chapters deal with charcuterie equipment; herbs and seasonings; and sauces and relishes. They are followed by four substantial chapters of recipes for terrines, pâtés (cold and hot), and galantines; sausages and boudins blancs; salt pork and hams; and the main cuts of fresh pork. The final four chapters cover the "Extremities"; "Insides"; "Fat"; and "Blood" (black puddings). Throughout, there are illustrative line drawings by M.J. Mott. When the first American edition was published, in 1968, three of the US's leading cookery writers—Julia Child, James Beard and Michael Field—called it "the best cook book of the year". In Britain, Penguin Books published a paperback edition in 1970. The book was out of print for some time in the late 1990s—the food correspondent of The Guardian encouraged readers to write to the publishers "and bully them into reprinting"—but was reissued in 2001 and (at 2019) has remained in print ever since. In 2001 the chef Chris Galvin called the book "a masterpiece": - so informative and well written ... it feels that you have someone on hand to help, steering you through the recipe, avoiding unnecessary technical terms and instead using universal words and phrases, e.g. "whirling ingredients together", "simmering and not galloping a stock". Most importantly Grigson encourages you to attempt dishes insisting, for example, that making a sausage is a simple affair then following this statement up with recipe after recipe for saucisse fumé, saucisse de campagne and saussicon sec. Translations of the book have been published in Dutch (Worst, Paté: en andere Charcuterie uit de Franse Keuken) and—unusually for a book on food by a British author—in French. ### 1970s #### Good Things (1971) The sections of the book deal with fish, meat and game, vegetables and fruit, with a miscellany to conclude. In some of Grigson's later books she dealt exhaustively with specific ingredients: her Fish Cookery two years later covered more than fifty varieties of fish. Here she deals with five: kippers, lobster, mussels, scallops and trout, writing about her few chosen subjects more expansively than in the later book, and discussing the pros and cons of various recipes. She says of lobsters that there is nothing more delicious, so sweet, firm and succulent, discusses the most humane way of killing them, and although advancing the proposition that they are best eaten hot with only lemon juice and butter on them, she gives the recipes for homard à l'Americaine (quoting Édouard de Pomiane's view that it is "a gastronomic cacophony") and Thermidor, as well as bisque, which she calls "without qualification ... the best of all soups". Grigson adopts the same approach in the other sections, dealing at leisure with favoured ingredients and dishes. Not all her choices are the most frequently seen in other cookery books: in the meat section she devotes eight pages to snails, and ten to sweetbreads, and none to steaks or roasts. Among the six fruits she writes about, apples and strawberries are joined by quince and prunes. She agrees that stewed prunes endured at school or in prison—the "dreadful alliance between prunes and rice or prunes and custard powder"—are best forgotten, and makes her case for the prune as a traditional ingredient in meat and fish dishes, giving as examples beef or hare casseroled with prunes, turkey with prune stuffing, and tripe slowly simmered with prunes. In the final section she covers five French cakes, ice creams and sorbets, and fruit liqueurs. WorldCat records 21 editions of Good Things published between 1971 and 2009 in English and translation. The original edition, like the charcuterie book four years earlier, had line drawings by M.J. Mott. A reprint by the Folio Society in 2009 had illustrations, some in colour, by Alice Tait. #### Fish Cookery (1973) The book was first published as The International Wine and Food Society's Guide to Fish Cookery in 1973, but became widely known in its paperback form with the shorter title, issued by Penguin in 1975. Grigson did not believe that anything is truly original in recipes, and happily included those of other writers in her books, being careful to acknowledge her sources—"There's nothing new about intellectual honesty". Her influences were not exclusively European: among those she credited in her Fish Cookery (1973) were Claudia Roden's A Book of Middle Eastern Food, Mary Lamb's New Orleans Cuisine and James Beard's Delights and Prejudices. Nevertheless, Fish Cookery is, of Grigson's books, the one most focused on the British cook, because, as she observes, the same edible birds and quadrupeds are found in many parts of the world, but species of fish are generally more confined to particular areas. Even given that limitation, Grigson urges her British readers to be more adventurous in their choice of fresh fish. She points out that there are more than fifty species native to British waters, not including shellfish or freshwater fish, and she urges cooks to venture beyond "cod and plaice, overcooked and coated with greasy batter". The chapters of Fish Cookery are "Choosing, Cleaning and Cooking Fish"; "Court-bouillons, Sauces and Butters"; "Fish Stews and Soups"; "Flat-fish"; "More Fish from the Sea"; "The Great Fish"; "Fish Caught in Fresh Water"; "Shellfish and Crustaceans"; "and "Cured and Preserved Fish". The book concludes with glossaries of fish names and cookery terms and measures. "Great" in the title of the sixth chapter refers to size, rather than particular pre-eminence: it includes tuna, swordfish, shark and sunfish. Grigson ascribes greatness in the qualitative sense only to sole and turbot among sea fish, trout and salmon among fresh-water species, and eel, lobster and crayfish. As well as classics such as sole Véronique, bouillabaisse, moules marinière, and lobster Thermidor, Grigson gives recipes for more unusual combinations of ingredients, including cod steaks with Gruyère cheese sauce, herring with gooseberries, scallop and artichoke soup, and prawns in tomato, cream and vermouth sauce. A statement in the section on mussels led to minor controversy some years after publication. Grigson writes that once the mussels are cooked any that do not open should be thrown away. She gives no reason, but many subsequent writers have taken it that eating a closed mussel would be injurious, rather than simply impracticable. The Australian Fisheries Research and Development Corporation published research in 2012 to rebut the assumption. Grigson had completed two-thirds of the text of a revised edition of the book when she died. Her editor, Jenny Dereham, completed the revision, using additional recipes and articles Grigson had published since 1973. It was published with the title Jane Grigson's Fish Book in 1993, in hardback by Michael Joseph and in paperback by Penguin. Reviewing the new edition in The Independent, Michael Leapman wrote that many of the recipes had been updated to reflect current tastes—"a little less cream and butter"—and remarked on Grigson's exploration of new areas of interest little known to readers of the first edition, such as sashimi and ceviche. #### English Food (1974) The book has the subtitle, "An anthology chosen by Jane Grigson". As in her earlier books, Grigson made no claim to originality in her recipes, and was scrupulous about crediting those with a known author. The chapters cover soups; cheese and egg dishes; vegetables; fish; meat, poultry and game; puddings; cakes, biscuits and pancakes; and stuffings, sauces and preserves. Line drawings by Gillian Zeiner illustrate details of kitchen techniques, materials and equipment. The introduction outlines Grigson's thoughts on good English cooking and its decline. Another point in the introduction is that whereas in France most of the great cookery writers have been men, in England it is the women writers, such as Hannah Glasse and Eliza Acton, who stand out. Many of their recipes are included in subsequent chapters. The introduction to the revised 1979 edition enlarges on the state of English food, and calls for better cookery teaching in British schools. Grigson emphasises the advantages of good, locally produced food, which she says, is not only better but usually cheaper than that offered by the large commercial concerns: "Words such as 'fresh' and 'home-made' have been borrowed by commerce to tell lies." In a study of "The 50 best cookbooks" in 2010, Rachel Cooke wrote that it was debatable which of Grigson's "many wonderful books" was the best, "but the one for which she will always be most celebrated is English Food". Cooke quotes the critic Fay Maschler's view that Grigson "restored pride to the subject of English food and gave evidence that there is a valid regional quality still extant in this somewhat beleaguered cuisine." The book contains mostly English recipes, but draws from time to time on the cuisines of Wales and Scotland. Cooke describes it as "undoubtedly a work of scholarship: carefully researched, wide-ranging and extremely particular" but adds that it also contains "hundreds of excellent recipes, the vast majority of them short, precise and foolproof. Who could resist poached turbot with shrimp sauce, or a properly made Cornish pasty?" Among the puddings in the book are Yorkshire curd tart, brown bread ice cream, queen of puddings and Sussex pond pudding. English Food won the Glenfiddich Award for the cookery book of the year, 1974. A new edition, with an introduction by Sophie Grigson, was published by Ebury Press, London, in 2002. Reviewing it, Lindsey Bareham wrote, "If you don't already own a copy of this seminal book, now is the time to invest in our edible heritage made digestible by one of the finest writers we have ever produced". #### The World Atlas of Food (1974) Subtitled "A Gourmet's Guide to the Great Regional Dishes of the World", this 319-page book was published by Mitchell Beazley, a company specialising in atlases and other extensively illustrated works of reference. Grigson is credited as "contributing editor". James Beard wrote the introduction, titled "An epicurean journey". The book has pages illustrating and describing ingredients of the various areas of the world—fish, meat, vegetables, fungi and fruit. The cuisines of Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Americas are covered. The American edition was published by Simon & Schuster in 1974. The book was reissued in Australia and the US in 1984 and in Britain in 1988 and was reprinted in 1989. #### The Mushroom Feast (1975) The Mushroom Feast was published by Michael Joseph in 1975. The book is in six chapters. The first, "The best edible mushrooms", has descriptions of twenty varieties of mushroom, from the familiar cultivated Agaricus bisporus, morels, cèpes, girolles and oysters, to the less well known matsutake, parasol, shaggy cap, wood-blewit and others. Each is illustrated with a line drawing by Yvonne Skargon, and followed by descriptions of the flavour and basic cooking instructions. The next chapter, dealing with preserved mushrooms, sauces, stuffings, and soups, gives modern and old recipes, including some by Hannah Glasse, Eliza Acton, Marie-Antoine Carême, Hilda Leyel and Grigson's mentor and friend Elizabeth David. In the chapter on mushroom main dishes—such as in an open tart or a covered pie, in a gateau with cream, or stuffed with almonds, or baked in the Genoese style—other ingredients play a subordinate part in the recipes, but are given more prominence in "Mushrooms with fish" and "Mushrooms with meat, poultry, and game". After a section on the principal mushrooms of Japanese and Chinese cooking, an appendix gives five basic recipes for sauces to accompany mushrooms. WorldCat records 18 editions of the book published between 1975 and 2008. #### Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book (1978) For this book Grigson adopted a straightforward alphabetical layout. There are chapters on more than eighty vegetables, from artichokes to yams. Most chapters are in three parts: brief historical information about the vegetables, guidance on preparing them, and recipes using them. The author does not play down her own likes and dislikes; she praises artichokes and asparagus as "the two finest vegetables we can grow", but calls winter turnips and swedes "that grim pair", and admits to a lifelong detestation of kale. Seakale, on the other hand, she rates highly, not only for its delicate flavour, but as the only vegetable in the entire book native to England. Grigson considered omitting mushrooms from the book, on the grounds that they are not a vegetable and that she had already devoted a whole book to them in 1975, but decided that "leaving them out won't do", and gave them a two-page chapter, covering their choice and preparation, and giving recipes for mushroom soup and mushroom pie. Also included are savoury fruits such as avocados and tomatoes. As well as ingredients familiar in European cuisine, Grigson includes sections on bean sprouts, Chinese artichokes, okra, sweet potato, pignuts and other vegetables less well known among her readership in the 1970s. The longest chapters are those on lettuces (13 pages), spinach and tomatoes (both 18 pages) and potatoes (24 pages). In her preface to the first American edition in 1979, Grigson observed that although British and American cooks found each other's systems of measurement confusing (citing the US use of volume rather than weight for solid ingredients), the two countries were at one in suffering from supermarkets' obsession with the appearance rather than the flavour of vegetables. The book brought its author her first Glenfiddich Food and Drink Writer of the Year Award and the first of two André Simon Memorial Prizes. #### Food With the Famous (1979) The book has its origins in a series of articles Grigson wrote for The Observer's colour magazine in 1978, and is described as part cookery book and part social history. Her publisher wrote that she "re-read favourite novels, re-examined pictures in the great galleries, explored houses, letters, journals, and the cookery books used (or written) by her choice of famous men and women". Starting with "the great diarist and salad fancier" John Evelyn in the 17th century, she traces a chronological development of western cooking. Her other examples are from the 18th century (Parson James Woodforde), the cusp of the 18th and 19th (Jane Austen, Thomas Jefferson, and the Rev Sydney Smith), the high-19th (Lord and Lady Shaftesbury, Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola); and on into the 20th "with Marcel Proust in the gourmet's Paris, and Claude Monet among the water-lilies at Giverny". In the introduction to Evelyn's chapter, Grigson describes his contribution to British food—translating the works of Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie, promoting ice-houses and recording the earliest example of the pressure cooker. She quotes him on vegetables, for instance on beetroot: "vulgar, but eaten with oil and vinegar, as usually, it is no despicable salad." Evelyn's garden was organised so that mixed green salad could be put on the table every day of the year; Grigson lists the 35 different species from balm to tripe-madam that Evelyn specified for his salads. For the chapters on the novelists, Grigson gives recipes for dishes mentioned in their books, including white soup and fricassée of sweetbread for Jane Austen, asparagus soup à la comtesse, and fillets of sole with ravigote sauce for Zola, brill Radziwill and boeuf à la mode for Proust, and for Dumas, who published a book about food, she prints his own recipes for cabbage soup, scrambled eggs with shrimps, and several others. Although Grigson's favourite of her works was the 1982 fruit book, she said she had a particular fondness for Food With the Famous. ### 1980s #### The Observer French Cookery School (1980) This book was a spin-off from an Observer series. Its two authors, Grigson and Anne Willan of La Varenne cookery school in Paris, augmented their Observer articles for the book. Willan's sections, occupying the majority of the 300 pages, give technical advice on various aspects of cooking, such as boning, making choux pastry, the use of gelatine, and cooking with bains-marie. A 1991 bibliography describes Grigson's section—a 47-page "Anthology of French cooking and kitchen terms"—as "an alphabetic listing of descriptions written in condensed but detailed prose, full of personal observation; almost a little book in itself". #### Jane Grigson's Fruit Book (1982) For Grigson, this book was more fun to write than any of her others. Her particular fondness for fruits caused her to protest in her introduction about the quality offered by large suppliers: > The food trade makes the egalitarian mistake, which is also a convenience for itself, of thinking that every food has to be as cheap and inoffensive as every other similar food. This mistake has ruined chicken and potatoes and bread. No wine merchant sells only plonk, no flower shop sticks to daisies. In the matter of vegetables and fruit, we seem often to be reduced to a steady bottom of horticultural plonk. The layout follows that of the vegetable book of three years earlier: chapters on each fruit, set out alphabetically from apples to water-melon. In between, familiar fruits such as bananas, cherries, pears and strawberries are interspersed with cherimoyas, medlars, persimmons and sapodillas. There are 46 of these chapters, taking 432 pages. The book finishes with a miscellany of fruit-related topics, such as matching fruits and wines, fruit preserves, and recipes for biscuits suitable to eat with fruit. As well as recipes in which the fruit is the star ingredient, Grigson gives details of many dishes where fruit is combined with meat, poultry or fish, including pheasant with apples, lamb with apricots, sole with banana, quail with cherries, oxtail with grapes, and eel soup with pears. As in the vegetable book, Grigson is clear about her likes and dislikes. "Rhubarb: Nanny-food. Governess-food. School-meal-food." She finds some recipes for it worth including, but falls short of calling them delectable—"merely not too undelectable". Reviewing the book in Petits Propos Culinaires, Jane Davidson called it "brilliant", adding, "Anecdotes, history, poetry and personal appreciation are all here as well as practical suggestions on how to use both the familiar and less so. ... In Michelin language, four stars and six place settings". Like the Vegetable Book, this one won Grigson a Glenfiddich and an André Simon award. #### The Observer Guide to European Cookery (1983) Grigson published The Observer Guide to European Cookery in 1983. She expanded her original articles from The Observer into this 256-page book, extensively illustrated by uncredited Observer photographers. A reviewer commented that one might expect the author, her life based partly in France, to begin with French cuisine, but Grigson explains: - Greece comes first, with classical and Hellenic chefs already theorising about food in terms that do not seem odd today. In terms that make perfect sense. Italy took on the skills of Greece, since well-off Romans employed chefs from Athens just as well-off Northerners have looked to Paris for their chefs. Through Spain, Arab dishes and Arab gardening, as well as new vegetables and foods from America, were handed on to the rest of Europe. Portugal comes in here, in its great phase of travel and discovery. France next, in the perfect, unique position between Mediterranean and Atlantic seas, exactly poised to take advantage of the Renaissance and the New World. In each chapter Grigson mixes the well known and the offbeat. In the opening Greek chapter, recipes for taramasalata, moussaka and dolmades sit alongside hare in walnut sauce and salad of calf brains. Italian recipes include classics such as osso buco with risotto milanese, Parmigiana di melanzane and vitello tonnato, but also grilled eel, sole with Parmesan, tripe with pig's trotters, and lamb sautéed with olives. Similar juxtapositions are found in other chapters—Portuguese cuisine beyond sardines, British beyond steak and kidney pudding, and Scandinavian beyond smörgåsbord. Among the less well-known dishes described by Grigson are beef fillet with gentleman's sauce, chicken in a dressing-gown, chilled grape soup, quaking pudding, red wine soup, and Siberian ravioli. In the US the book was published in 1983 by Atheneum, under the title Jane Grigson's Book of European Cookery. #### The Observer Guide to British Cookery (1984) This 231-page book is similar in layout and approach to the previous year's guide to European cooking, but unlike its predecessor it was published in book form before recipes from it were extracted and printed by the newspaper. The British regions are considered in nine sections, each with an introduction describing the character and ingredients, followed by recipes associated with places within the region. The South-West chapter includes Cornish bouillabaisse from Gidleigh Park; Sedgemoor eel stew; lardy cake; and "Cornwall's most famous and most travestied dish", the Cornish pasty—"pronounced with a long 'ah' as in Amen". Among the dishes in the London and the South section are steak and kidney pudding, using beef rump steak and lambs' kidneys; salt beef; and bread and butter pudding. Dishes from the Midlands include rabbit and pig tail stew; Oldbury gooseberry pies; Bakewell pudding; and Shrewsbury cakes. The East Anglia section includes turnip pie; stuffed guinea fowl; Lincolnshire plum bread; and, for its connection with Trinity College, Cambridge, crème brûlée. In the North East chapter Grigson includes recipes for mutton and leek broth, mussel or oyster pudding and toad in the hole. Dishes from the North West include potted shrimps, Lancashire hotpot, Liverpool's scouse, Cumberland sausage and the chicken dish Hindle Wakes. Throughout the book Grigson includes lesser-known dishes alongside famous classics. The chapter on Scotland has recipes for Scotch broth, Haggis, Atholl brose and shortbread alongside Scotch woodcock and the sheep's head broth Powsowdie. Among the Welsh dishes, cawl and Welsh rabbit are joined by caveach (pickled mackerel) and Lady Lanover's salt duck. In the final chapter, Ireland, Irish stew and soda bread are included alongside nettle soup and boxty (potato pancakes). Each chapter concludes with a section contributed by Derek Cooper on "Regional drink". For the English regions and Wales the drinks are mostly beers and ciders, with some wines in the south. Sloe gin is included for Cumbria as are whisky for Scotland and whiskey and stout for Ireland. #### Exotic Fruits and Vegetables (1986) The illustrations play a particularly large part in this book, and the artist, Charlotte Knox, is given equal billing on the covers of both the British and the American editions. The book is described by its publisher as "An illustrated guide to fruits and vegetables from the world's hotter climates." Grigson added notes on the choice, preparation, and culinary use of each fruit or vegetable, and recipes using them. These include mango and carambola salad, mango and paw paw tart, persimmon fudge, and grey mullet with pomegranate sauce in the fruit chapters, and in the vegetable sections, plantain and chicken, snake gourd Malay style, drumstick curry with prawns, and yam and goat meat pottage. The book concludes with sections on 14 herbs and spices, from banana leaf to turmeric. A US edition (1987) was published by Henry Holt as Cooking With Exotic Fruits and Vegetables. ### Short books and booklets #### Cooking Carrots (1975) and Cooking Spinach (1976) These two booklets, of 36 pages each, were written for Abson Books, Bristol. They follow the same pattern: brief guidance on choosing, buying and preparing the vegetable, followed by 37 recipes apiece. Both books conclude with advice on growing the vegetable. The spinach book was originally sold with a packet of seeds attached to the cover. #### The Year of the French (1982) This booklet (16 pages) containing six recipes by Grigson, originally published in The Radio Times, was issued to accompany the BBC Television series of the same name, "A calendar of French life in 12 film portraits". Each section of the booklet has a one or two-page introduction by Grigson relating the recipe to a representative French person shown in the series, from the driver of a TGV to the octogenarian head of a beaujolais wine-growers collective. #### Dishes from the Mediterranean (1984) This publication is a slim (96-page) hardback, with numerous coloured photographs and line drawings of dishes. It was published by Woodhead-Faulkner for the supermarket chain J. Sainsbury. A new and enlarged edition was published in paperback the following year; it was reissued in 1991 with the title The Cooking of the Mediterranean. The book contains chapters on Mediterranean ingredients; sauces and relishes; soups; first courses and meze dishes; fish; meat, poultry and game; rice and bread; and sweet dishes. In addition to descriptions and some historical notes, Grigson includes practical advice such as, for preparing fegato alla veneziana, "Half-freeze the liver so that it is solid enough to cut into thin, tissue-paper slivers". and for a chicken casserole with fifty cloves of garlic (poulet aux cinquante gousses d'ail) reassurance about the number of garlic cloves: "the purée they make is delicious and unidentifiable". #### The Cooking of Normandy (1987) This book, published for Sainsbury's, follows the pattern of the earlier Mediterranean publication. It is a 96-page, extensively illustrated addition to the "Sainsbury Cookbook" series. Line drawings by Mandy Doyle show details of some of the techniques described in the text. The sections cover ingredients and specialities; soups and first courses; fish and shellfish; meat, poultry and game; and desserts and drinks, with a short epilogue. In her introduction Grigson writes, "For me, Normandy cooking is a return to good, basic home dishes, with the added pleasure of tracking down ingredients of the highest quality." Although the book was published for and sold by a supermarket chain, Grigson's recipes include dishes for which such stores would not be expected to stock key ingredients, such as saddle of rabbit (she suggests using chicken if rabbit is not available) for lapin à la moutarde and sorrel for fricandeau à la oseille (mentioning spinach as a substitute if necessary). ### Contributions to books by others A bibliography published in Petis Propos Culinaires in 1991 lists substantial contributions by Grigson to books by other writers: the introduction to The Book of Ingredients by Aidan Bailey, Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz and Helena Radecke; one of five introductory essays in The Shell Guide to France, in which she offers guidance on food shops in France—poissonerie, pâtisserie, supermarché etc.—and how to shop in them; and a foreword, of about 1600 words, to The French Cheese Book by Patrick Rance. In her foreword to Gillian Riley's new translation of Giacomo Castelvetro's 1614 book The Fruit, Herbs and Vegetables of Italy Grigson describes her acquaintance with Castelvetro's work and with the paintings of Giovanna Garzoni which figure largely in the illustrations to the new edition. WorldCat lists introductions by Grigson to five other books: The Elle Cookbook (later republished as The Art of French Cuisine); the British edition of The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook by Alice Waters; Francis Bissell's A Cook's Calendar; A Definitive Catalogue of Toiletries and Comestibles by Tessa Traeger and Mimi Errington; and a new edition of Geoffrey Grigson's The Englishman's Flora. ### Posthumously-published anthologies #### The Enjoyment of Food: The Best of Jane Grigson (1992) This 464-page anthology of recipes from Grigson's books was compiled by Roy Fullick and published by Michael Joseph. In a preface Fullick writes that it is intended "both as a tribute to Jane Grigson's culinary skills and scholarship and as a practical cookery book". The book has an introduction by Elizabeth David, recalling her friendship with Grigson and reminding readers that although it was now taken for granted that Grigson was a classic cookery writer, she had burst on the culinary scene in the late 1960s when "the clarity of the writing, and the confident knowledge ... displayed by this young author were new treats for all of us". David comments that "this varied yet balanced compilation" would remind readers what a loss the cookery world had sustained by Grigson's premature death and inspire them to acquire more of Grigson's works. "Hers are books which can be read in the comfort of one's sitting room as well as used in the kitchen". The main text is in eight sections, with the titles "At home in England"; "At home in France"; "Charcuterie", "The Mediterranean", "The Europeans", "The Americas", "India and the Far East" and "Treats and celebrations". There are recipes from writers of the past such as Eliza Acton, Hannah Glasse, Maria Rundell and Auguste Escoffier, and contemporaries including Elizabeth David, Richard Olney, Julia Child, Alice Waters, Antonio Carluccio and Grigson's daughter Sophie. The recipes are interspersed with Grigson's customary historical background information: there are appearances by Lord Byron, Chaucer, Casanova, Louis XIV, and Evelyn, Sydney Smith and others from Food with the Famous. The book was reissued in 2015 as The Best of Jane Grigson: The Enjoyment of Food by Grub Street publishers, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Grigson's death. #### Jane Grigson's Desserts (1993) This is one of two books of Grigson recipes published simultaneously by Michael Joseph. It is a 92-page hardback, in a small-page format of 12 cm × 15 cm (5 in × 6 in). It is illustrated throughout with line drawings and contains 50 dessert recipes, all taken from previously published Grigson books. Included are some old recipes such as Robert Southey's gooseberry pie and Elizabeth Raffald's orange custards, and many from overseas (redcurrant tart from Austria, strawberry fritters from France, and sweet pumpkin from Turkey) as well as British favourites like summer pudding. #### Jane Grigson's Soups (1993) Uniform with the preceding volume, the book contains 50 recipes from earlier books by Grigson. Well-known classic soups such as bouillabaisse, gazpacho and cock-a-leekie are interspersed with more unusual recipes including apricot and apple, red onion and wine, and cucumber and sorrel. #### Puddings (1996) This is a 64-page paperback, in a small format (approximately A6) issued one of the "Penguin 60s series" of miniature books along with, among others, Elizabeth David's Peperonata and Other Italian Dishes, and a collection of Sophie Grigson's recipes, From Sophie's Table. Like the 1993 desserts collection, above, it reused material from previously published books by Grigson. ## Style, reputation and legacy ### Style Along with Elizabeth David, Grigson is widely credited with transforming the British cookery book into something more than a collection of recipes. Like David's, Grigson's writing offered not only lists of ingredients and instructions for preparation and cooking, but also interesting historical and social background. The obituaries were warm and full of praise for Grigson's style and wide appeal. In The Independent, Alan Davidson wrote: > She won to herself this wide audience because she was above all a friendly writer, equipped by both frame of mind and style of writing to communicate easily with them. > > However much more she knew about this or that than do the rest of us, she never seemed to be talking down to anyone. On the contrary, she is a most companionable presence in the kitchen; often catching the imagination with a deftly chosen fragment of history or poetry, but never failing to explain the why as well as the how of cookery. How often have I heard people declare that her recipes are not just a pleasure to read—they always work\! Sophie Grigson writes that her mother "thought food was the key to unlocking life"; in the introduction to Good Things, Jane stated: > Cooking something delicious is really more satisfactory than painting pictures or throwing pots. ... Food has the tact to disappear, leaving the room and opportunity for masterpieces to come. The mistakes don’t hang on the walls or stand on the shelves to reproach you for ever. In Elizabeth David's view, Grigson's books have a "clarity of the writing, and the confident knowledge of its subject and its history". The sociologist Stephen Mennell believes that Grigson's writing, like David's, should be considered "gastronomic literature", rather than cookery book writing, and therefore read as literature; the cultural sociologists Bob Ashley, Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones and Ben Taylor consider that because of the "considerable erudition" in her work, Grigson's books can be read as "culinary, historical literature", rather than cookery books. Geraldene Holt, who thinks Grigson's prose is both lyrical and robust, describes Grigson's writing style as: > forthright yet entertaining, in a similar vein to that of her eminent forebears who include Morton Shand, Edward Bunyard, Lady Jekyll and Elizabeth David. Jane Grigson's essays are, however, memorably enlivened by relevant information and quotations from a remarkably wide range of sources—poets, novelists, gardeners, earlier food writers and cookery manuals. According to the writers Hazel Castell and Kathleen Griffin, Grigson tried to show food within its historical, social and cultural context, which was "at the very heart of life, so it was natural that literature, history and poetry should be included alongside recipes". The journalist Deirdre McQuillan considers that the scholarly references are "always there to delight, and never to impress". Rayner sees in her writing a "lightness of touch" with her use of scholarly material. Christopher Driver writes: > Grigson's range was wider than Elizabeth David's, for it extended from fish and fungi to the exotic fruits and vegetables that arrived on the international market in the eighties. She would have been the first to acknowledge that Elizabeth's culinary scholarship was deeper and her precision superior: one of the little-noticed reasons for Mrs David's dominance of her audience in the 1950s was her miraculous sense of lucid detail while Mrs Grigson in the 1970s and 1980s could allow herself in print an element of careless rapture, depending on the commonsense of advanced cooks by then men as well as women. The literary historian Nicola Humble observes that because of the way Grigson used the historical and literary sources in a more relaxed way, her writing was "less haughty" that David's could be. ### Legacy and reputation In 1991 the Jane Grigson Trust was set up in Grigson's memory. Its stated aim is "to advance the public understanding of food, its cultural and nutritional aspects, and the art of its preparation." The trust funds the annual Jane Grigson Lecture at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery every July. In 2015, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of her death, the Jane Grigson Trust Award was inaugurated, for the writer of a commissioned first non-fiction book on the subject of food. It was proposed soon after Grigson's death that a library of books about food and cooking should be set up in her honour, under the Jane Grigson Trust. Sophie Grigson made the core of her mother's personal collection of food books available on permanent loan. The Jane Grigson Library, inaugurated in 1992, was originally housed at the Guildhall Library in the City of London. By 2005, augmented by donations and bequests, the library had doubled its original size, to more than 4,000 volumes. It was rehoused at Oxford Brookes University in 2005. The library is available for use by scholars, researchers or members of the public. In March 2015 the university held a month-long exhibition, Jane Grigson: Good Things, to examine her life and work. In 1992 the International Association of Culinary Professionals introduced the Jane Grigson Award, to honour "a book that exemplifies Jane Grigson's extraordinary ability to put food in a wider cultural context, using diligent but not pedantic scholarship". The first winner was the Canadian writer Margaret Visser, for her work The Rituals of Dinner. Other winners include, in 1995, Elizabeth David and Jill Norman, Harvest of the Cold Months: The Social History of Ice and Ices and, in 2014, Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding and Jose Vouillamoz, for Wine Grapes. In 2015, on the 25th anniversary of her death, The Food Programme broadcast a two-part special on Grigson and her impact on the culture of British food. Humble considers that Grigson's work turned the minds of the British public to Industrial Revolution British food cooked by Hannah Glasse, Elizabeth Raffald, Maria Rundell and Eliza Acton; this, Humble states, had "a transformative effect on ... [British] eating habits". She writes that the reason for the effect is that Grigson's writing is reader-friendly and English Food made many dishes fashionable again. The chef Shaun Hill believes Grigson's "legacy is ongoing—it's not finished yet"; he considers that even though much of her work was written 40 years ago, it is still relevant to modern readers. The food writer Diana Henry said of Grigson: > Jane Grigson exemplifies what a food writer should be. She is cerebral and practical—it's hard to find practitioners who are both—and she is inclusive. She didn't just want to tell you about cooking and impart knowledge, she wanted you to cook too. She was neither grand nor snobbish. You knew that if you ever got the chance to cook for her she wouldn't mind if you produced something less than perfect. ## Notes, references and sources

Isopoda

Order of arthropods

Isopoda is an order of crustaceans. Members of this group are called isopods and include both aquatic species, and terrestrial species such as woodlice. All have rigid, segmented exoskeletons, two pairs of antennae, seven pairs of jointed limbs on the thorax, and five pairs of branching appendages on the abdomen that are used in respiration. Females brood their young in a pouch under their thorax called the marsupium. Isopods have various feeding methods: some eat dead or decaying plant and animal matter, others are grazers or filter feeders, a few are predators, and some are internal or external parasites, mostly of fish. Aquatic species mostly live on the seabed or the bottom of freshwater bodies of water, but some taxa can swim for short distance. Terrestrial forms move around by crawling and tend to be found in cool, moist places. Some species are able to roll themselves into a ball as a defense mechanism or to conserve moisture like species in the family Armadillididae, the pillbugs. There are over 10,000 identified species of isopod worldwide, with around 4,500 species found in marine environments, mostly on the seabed, 500 species in fresh water, and another 5,000 species on land. The order is divided into eleven suborders. The fossil record of isopods dates back to the Carboniferous period (in the Pennsylvanian epoch), at least 300 million years ago, when isopods lived in shallow seas. The name Isopoda is derived from the Greek roots (from , meaning "equal") and (from ποδ-, the stem of , meaning "foot"). ## Description Classified within the arthropods, isopods have a chitinous exoskeleton and jointed limbs. Isopods are typically flattened dorsoventrally (broader than they are deep), although many species deviate from this rule, particularly parasitic forms, and those living in the deep sea or in ground water habitats. Their colour may vary, from grey to white, or in some cases red, green, or brown. Isopods vary in size, ranging from some Microcerberidae species of just .3 millimetres (0.012 in) to the deep sea giant isopod Bathynomus spp. of nearly 50 cm (20 in). Giant isopods lack an obvious carapace (shell), which is reduced to a "cephalic shield" covering only the head. This means that the gill-like structures, which in other related groups are protected by the carapace, are instead found on specialised limbs on the abdomen. The dorsal (upper) surface of the animal is covered by a series of overlapping, articulated plates which give protection while also providing flexibility. The isopod body plan consists of a head (cephalon), a thorax (pereon) with seven segments (pereonites), and an abdomen (pleon) with six segments (pleonites), some of which may be fused. The head is fused with the first segment of the thorax to form the cephalon. There are two pairs of unbranched antennae, the first pair being vestigial in land-dwelling species. The eyes are compound and unstalked and the mouthparts include a pair of maxillipeds and a pair of mandibles (jaws) with palps (segmented appendages with sensory functions) and lacinia mobilis (spine-like movable appendages). The seven free segments of the thorax each bear a pair of unbranched pereopods (limbs). In most species these are used for locomotion and are of much the same size, morphology and orientation, giving the order its name "Isopoda", from the Greek equal foot. In a few species, the front pair are modified into gnathopods with clawed, gripping terminal segments. The pereopods are not used in respiration, as are the equivalent limbs in amphipods, but the coxae (first segments) are fused to the tergites (dorsal plates) to form epimera (side plates). In mature females, some or all of the limbs have appendages known as oostegites which fold underneath the thorax and form a brood chamber for the eggs. In males, the gonopores (genital openings) are on the ventral surface of segment eight and in the females, they are in a similar position on segment six. One or more of the abdominal segments, starting with the sixth segment, is fused to the telson (terminal section) to form a rigid pleotelson. The first five abdominal segments each bear a pair of biramous (branching in two) pleopods (lamellar structures which serve the function of gas exchange, and in aquatic species serve as gills and propulsion), and the last segment bears a pair of biramous uropods (posterior limbs). In males, the second pair of pleopods, and sometimes also the first, are modified for use in transferring sperm. The endopods (inner branches of the pleopods) are modified into structures with thin, permeable cuticles (flexible outer coverings) which act as gills for gas exchange. In some terrestrial isopods, these resemble lungs. ## Diversity and classification Isopods belong to the larger group Peracarida, which are united by the presence of a special chamber under the thorax for brooding eggs. They have a cosmopolitan distribution and over 10,000 species of isopod, classified into 11 suborders, have been described worldwide. Around 4,500 species are found in marine environments, mostly on the sea floor. About 500 species are found in fresh water and another 5,000 species are the terrestrial woodlice, which form the suborder Oniscidea. In the deep sea, members of the suborder Asellota predominate, to the near exclusion of all other isopods, having undergone a large adaptive radiation in that environment. The largest isopod is in the genus Bathynomus and some large species are fished commercially for human food in Mexico, Japan and Hawaii. Some isopod groups have evolved a parasitic lifestyle, particularly as external parasites of fish. They can damage or kill their hosts and can cause significant economic loss to commercial fisheries. In reef aquariums, parasitic isopods can become a pest, endangering the fish and possibly injuring the aquarium keeper. Some members of the family Cirolanidae suck the blood of fish, and others, in the family Aegidae, consume the blood, fins, tail and flesh and can kill the fish in the process. The World Marine, Freshwater and Terrestrial Isopod Crustaceans database subdivides the order into eleven suborders: - Asellota – This suborder contains the superfamily Aselloidea, a group that contains most of the freshwater isopods in the northern hemisphere, and the superfamilies Stenetrioidea, Gnathostenetroidoidea and Janiroidea, which are mostly marine. The latter superfamily, Janiroidea, has a massive radiation of deepsea families, many of which have taken bizarre forms. - Calabozoida – A small suborder consisting of two marine species in the family Calabozoidae and one freshwater species in the family Brasileirinidae which is found in subterranean locations. - Cymothoida – Chiefly marine isopods with over 2,700 species. Members are mostly carnivorous or parasitic. Includes the family Gnathiidae, the juveniles of which are parasitic on fishes. The previously recognised suborder Epicaridea is included as two superfamilies within this suborder and Cymothoida now includes part of the formerly recognised suborder Flabellifera. Also includes the former suborder Anthuridea, a group of worm-like isopods with very long bodies. - Limnoriidea – Mainly tropical isopods, some of which are herbivorous. - Microcerberidea – Tiny, worm-like isopods that live between particles on the bed of freshwater and shallow marine habitats. - Oniscidea – Semi-terrestrial and terrestrial isopods fully adapted for life on land. There are over 4,000 species of woodlice inhabiting forests, mountains, deserts and the littoral zone. - Phoratopidea – A single marine species, Phoratopus remex, which warrants its own suborder because of its unique characteristics. - Phreatoicidea – Small suborder of freshwater isopods resembling amphipods, limited to South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand. - Sphaeromatidea – Benthic isopods mostly from the southern hemisphere with respiratory pleopods inside a branchial chamber. This suborder now includes part of the formerly recognised suborder Flabellifera. - Tainisopidea – Freshwater isopods in a "relictual environment". - Valvifera – A large group of benthic, marine isopods with respiratory pleopods inside a branchial chamber under the abdomen. ## Evolutionary history Isopods first appeared in the fossil record during the Carboniferous period of the Paleozoic some 300 million years ago. They were primitive, short-tailed members of the suborder Phreatoicidea. At that time, Phreatoicideans were marine organisms with a cosmopolitan distribution. Nowadays, the members of this formerly widespread suborder form relic populations in freshwater environments in South Africa, India and Oceania, the greatest number of species being in Tasmania. Other primitive, short-tailed suborders include Asellota, Microcerberidea, Calabozoidea and the terrestrial Oniscidea. The short-tailed isopods have a short pleotelson and terminal, stylus-like uropods and have a sedentary lifestyle on or under the sediment on the seabed. The long-tailed isopods have a long pleotelson and broad lateral uropods which can be used in swimming. They are much more active and can launch themselves off the seabed and swim for short distances. The more advanced long-tailed isopods are mostly endemic to the southern hemisphere and may have radiated on the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana soon after it broke away from Laurasia 200 million years ago. The short-tailed forms may have been driven from the shallow seas in which they lived by increased predatory pressure from marine fish, their main predators. The development of the long-tailed forms may also have provided competition that helped force the short-tailed forms into refugia. The latter are now restricted to environments such as the deep sea, freshwater, groundwater and dry land. Isopods in the suborder Asellota are by far the most species-rich group of deep sea isopods. ## Locomotion Unlike the amphipods, marine and freshwater isopods are entirely benthic. This gives them little chance to disperse to new regions and may explain why so many species are endemic to restricted ranges. Crawling is the primary means of locomotion, and some species bore into the seabed, the ground or timber structures. Some members of the families Sphaeromatidae, Idoteidae and Munnopsidae are able to swim pretty well, and have their front three pairs of pleopods modified for this purpose, with their respiratory structures limited to the hind pleopods. Most terrestrial species are slow-moving and conceal themselves under objects or hide in crevices or under bark. The semi-terrestrial sea slaters (Ligia spp.) can run rapidly on land and many terrestrial species can roll themselves into a ball when threatened, a feature that has evolved independently in different groups and also in the marine sphaeromatids. ## Feeding and nutrition Isopods have a simple gut which lacks a midgut section; instead there are caeca connected to the back of the stomach in which absorption takes place. Food is sucked into the esophagus, a process enhanced in the blood-sucking parasitic species, and passed by peristalsis into the stomach, where the material is processed and filtered. The structure of the stomach varies, but in many species there is a dorsal groove into which indigestible material is channelled and a ventral part connected to the caeca where intracellular digestion and absorption take place. Indigestible material passes on through the hindgut and is eliminated through the anus, which is on the pleotelson. Isopods are detritivores, browsers, carnivores (including predators and scavengers), parasites, and filter feeders, and may occupy one or more of these feeding niches. Only aquatic and marine species are known to be parasites or filter feeders. Some exhibit coprophagia and will also consume their own fecal pellets. Terrestrial species are in general herbivorous, with woodlice feeding on moss, bark, algae, fungi and decaying material. In marine isopods that feed on wood, cellulose is digested by enzymes secreted in the caeca. Limnoria lignorum, for example, bores into wood and additionally feeds on the mycelia of fungi attacking the timber, thus increasing the nitrogen in its diet. Land-based wood-borers mostly house symbiotic bacteria in the hindgut which aid in digesting cellulose. There are numerous adaptations to this simple gut, but these are mostly correlated with diet rather than by taxonomic group. Parasitic species are mostly external parasites of fish or crustaceans and feed on blood. The larvae of the Gnathiidae family and adult cymothoidids have piercing and sucking mouthparts and clawed limbs adapted for clinging onto their hosts. In general, isopod parasites have diverse lifestyles and include Cancricepon elegans, found in the gill chambers of crabs; Athelges tenuicaudis, attached to the abdomen of hermit crabs; Crinoniscus equitans living inside the barnacle Balanus perforatus; cyproniscids, living inside ostracods and free-living isopods; bopyrids, living in the gill chambers or on the carapace of shrimps and crabs and causing a characteristic bulge which is even recognisable in some fossil crustaceans; and entoniscidae living inside some species of crab and shrimp. Cymothoa exigua is a parasite of the spotted rose snapper Lutjanus guttatus in the Gulf of California; it causes the tongue of the fish to atrophy and takes its place in what is believed to be the first instance discovered of a parasite functionally replacing a host structure in animals. ## Reproduction and development In most species, the sexes are separate and there is little sexual dimorphism, but a few species are hermaphroditic and some parasitic forms show large differences between the sexes. Some Cymothoidans are protandrous hermaphrodites, starting life as males and later changing sex, and some Anthuroideans are the reverse, being protogynous hermaphrodites that are born female. Some Gnathiidans males are sessile and live with a group of females. Males have a pair of penises, which may be fused in some species. The sperm is transferred to the female by the modified second pleopod which receives it from the penis and which is then inserted into a female gonopore. The sperm is stored in a special receptacle, a swelling on the oviduct close to the gonopore. Fertilisation only takes place when the eggs are shed soon after a moult, at which time a connection is established between the semen receptacle and the oviduct. The eggs, which may number up to several hundred, are brooded by the female in the marsupium, a chamber formed by flat plates known as oostegites under the thorax. This is filled with water even in terrestrial species. The eggs hatch as mancae, a post-larval stage which resembles the adult except for the absence of the last pair of pereopods. The lack of a swimming phase in the life cycle is a limiting factor in isopod dispersal, and may be responsible for the high levels of endemism in the order. As adults, isopods differ from other crustaceans in that moulting occurs in two stages known as "biphasic moulting". First they shed the exoskeleton from the posterior part of their body and later shed the anterior part. The giant Antarctic isopod Glyptonotus antarcticus is an exception, and moults in a single process. ## Terrestrial isopods The majority of crustaceans are aquatic and the isopods are one of the few groups of which some members now live on land. The only other crustaceans which include a small number of terrestrial species are amphipods (like sandhoppers) and decapods (crabs, shrimp, etc.). Terrestrial isopods play an important role in many tropical and temperate ecosystems by aiding in the decomposition of plant material through mechanical and chemical means, and by enhancing the activity of microbes. Macro-detritivores, including terrestrial isopods, are absent from arctic and sub-arctic regions, but have the potential to expand their range with increased temperatures in high latitudes. The woodlice, suborder Oniscidea, are the most successful group of terrestrial crustaceans and show various adaptations for life on land. They are subject to evaporation, especially from their ventral area, and as they do not have a waxy cuticle, they need to conserve water, often living in a humid environment and sheltering under stones, bark, debris or leaf litter. Desert species, like Hemilepistus reaumuri, are usually nocturnal, spending the day in a burrow and emerging at night. Moisture is achieved through food sources or by drinking, and some species can form their paired uropodal appendages into a tube and funnel water from dewdrops onto their pleopods. In many taxa, the respiratory structures on the endopods are internal, with a spiracle and pseudotrachaea, which resemble lungs. In others, the endopod is folded inside the adjoining exopod (outer branch of the pleopod). Both these arrangements help to prevent evaporation from the respiratory surfaces. Many species can roll themselves into a ball, a behaviour used in defense that also conserves moisture. Members of the families Ligiidae and Tylidae, commonly known as rock lice or sea slaters, are the least specialised of the woodlice for life on land. They inhabit the splash zone on rocky shores, jetties and pilings, may hide under debris washed up on the shore and can swim if immersed in water. ## See also - -

Starship Troopers (film)

1997 film by Paul Verhoeven

Starship Troopers is a 1997 American science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier, based on the 1959 novel by Robert A. Heinlein. Set in the 23rd century, the story follows teenager Johnny Rico and his comrades as they serve in the military of the United Citizen Federation, an Earth-based world government engaged in an interstellar war against an alien species known as the Arachnids. The film stars Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Muldoon, and Michael Ironside. Development of Starship Troopers began in 1991 as Bug Hunt at Outpost 7, written by Neumeier. After recognizing similarities between Neumeier's script and Heinlein's book, producer Jon Davison suggested aligning the script more closely with the novel to garner greater interest from studio executives. Despite these efforts development was slow, with studios hesitant to fund the costly project right up to the start of filming. Principal photography took place between April and October 1996 on a $100–110 million budget, of which nearly half was spent on the extensive computer-generated imagery (CGI) and practical effects required to vivify the Arachnid creatures. Released on November 7, 1997, Starship Troopers faced critical backlash, with reviewers interpreting the film as endorsing fascism and disparaging its violence and cast performances. Despite initial box office success, collections slowed down amid negative reviews and unfavorable word of mouth, culminating in a $121 million total gross against its budget, which made it the 34th-highest-grossing film of 1997. The disappointing performance of Starship Troopers was blamed, in part, on competition from a high number of successful or anticipated science fiction and genre films released that year, its satire and violence failing to connect with mainstream audiences, and ineffective marketing. Since its release, Starship Troopers has been critically re-evaluated and is now considered a cult classic and a prescient satire of fascism and authoritarian governance that has grown in relevancy. The film launched a multimedia franchise that includes four sequels—Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004), Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008), Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012), and Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017)—as well as a 1999 animated television series, video games, comics, and a variety of merchandise. ## Plot In the future, Earth is governed by the United Citizen Federation, a stratocratic regime founded generations earlier by "veterans" after democracy and social scientists brought civilization to the brink of ruin. Citizenship is exclusively earned through federal service, which grants rights—like voting and procreation—that are withheld from ordinary civilians. Humans, who are now capable of interstellar travel, conduct colonization missions throughout the galaxy, bringing them into conflict with a race of highly evolved insectoid creatures dubbed "Arachnids" or, derisively, "bugs". Against his parents' objections, teenage jock Johnny Rico enlists as a mobile infantryman to remain close to his girlfriend, spaceship pilot Carmen Ibanez. Their psychic friend Carl Jenkins joins military intelligence, while Isabelle "Dizzy" Flores—who is in love with Rico—deliberately transfers to his squad. Carmen ends her relationship with Rico due to their diverging career paths and her growing feelings for a fellow pilot, Zander Barcalow. During training, Rico impresses his drill sergeant, Zim, earning a promotion to squad leader. However, Rico makes a mistake during a training exercise, which leads to the death of a squad member and the resignation of another, resulting in Rico's demotion and flogging. Disheartened, Rico quits, but re-enlists after learning that an asteroid sent by the Arachnids has destroyed Buenos Aires, killing millions, including his parents. An invasion force is deployed to Klendathu, the Arachnids' home planet, but military intelligence underestimates the Arachnids' defensive abilities, leading to thousands of human casualties. Badly wounded, Rico is rescued by Lieutenant Jean Rasczak, his former high school teacher, but is mistakenly reported dead, devastating Carmen. Following his recovery, Rico, Dizzy, and squadmate Ace Levy join Rasczak's elite unit, the Roughnecks. After Rico defeats a gigantic "Tanker Bug" on the disputed planet of Tango Urilla, he is elevated to the rank of corporal for his valor and begins a romantic relationship with Dizzy. Responding to a distress signal on the Arachnid-controlled Planet P, the Roughnecks discover an Arachnid-ravaged outpost and are ambushed by the bugs. Carmen and Zander recover the surviving Roughnecks by dropship, but not before Dizzy is fatally impaled by an Arachnid and Rico mercy kills the mutilated Rasczak. The group returns to the fleet assembled in orbit above P, where Dizzy is eulogized. Jenkins, now a colonel, reveals the Roughnecks were deliberately ordered into the trap, justifying it as a necessary sacrifice to confirm the existence of a "Brain Bug", an intelligent Arachnid strategically directing the others. He assigns Rico command of the Roughnecks and field-promotes him to lieutenant, instructing him to return to P and capture the Brain Bug. As the battle commences, Carmen's ship is destroyed by the Arachnids, but an escape pod carrying her and Zander crashes into an underground tunnel system. The pair are captured by the Arachnids and the Brain Bug consumes Zander's brain, absorbing his knowledge. Rico directs his squad to complete their mission while he, Ace, and their squadmate Watkins rescue Carmen and hold the Arachnids at bay with a miniature nuclear bomb. The Brain Bug escapes while the Arachnids attack and fatally wound Watkins, who sacrifices himself by detonating the bomb while his teammates escape. On the surface, they learn that Zim has captured the Brain Bug and the assembled troops rejoice as Jenkins psychically detects it is afraid. A propaganda broadcast details how the Brain Bug is being invasively studied to learn its secrets and ensure humanity's victory. The ad encourages viewers to enlist and do their part in the war so they can become like Carmen, now captain of her own ship, and Rico, who enthusiastically leads his troops into another battle. ## Cast - Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico, a school sports star turned infantryman - Dina Meyer as Dizzy Flores, Rico's former classmate who joins the mobile infantry - Denise Richards as Carmen Ibanez, an aspiring starship pilot and Rico's girlfriend - Jake Busey as Ace Levy, an infantryman - Neil Patrick Harris as Carl Jenkins, a psychic who joins military intelligence. - Clancy Brown as Sergeant Zim, Rico's drill sergeant during training - Seth Gilliam as Sugar Watkins, a member of the Roughnecks special forces unit - Patrick Muldoon as Zander Barcalow, Rico's rival who is romantically interested in Carmen - Michael Ironside as Jean Rasczak, a former teacher turned squad leader Infantry characters include Blake Lindsley as Katrina, Tami-Adrian George as Djana'd, Eric Bruskotter as Breckinridge, Matt Levin as Kitten Smith, and Anthony Ruivivar as Shujumi. The rest of the cast includes Rue McClanahan as a biology teacher, Marshall Bell as General Owen, Brenda Strong as Captain Deladier, and Dean Norris as Commanding Officer. Christopher Curry and Lenore Kasdorf appear as Mr. and Mrs. Rico, while Bruce Gray and Denise Dowse appear as Sky Marshals Dienes and Meru. Corporals Bronski and Birdie are portrayed by Teo and Ungela Brockman, Sergeant Gillespie by Curnal Aulisio, and Robert David Hall portrays a heavily disfigured Recruitment Sergeant. Amy Smart appears as a pilot cadet, and Timothy Omundson portrays a psychic. Cameo appearances include producer Jon Davison as an Angry Survivor of the Buenos Aires asteroid attack, and writer Edward Neumeier as a handcuffed prisoner standing before Federation judges. Verhoeven's assistant, Stacy Lumbrezer, appears as a smiling woman during a psychic advertisement, and Paul Sammon, author of The Making of Starship Troopers, appears as a man feeding a cow to an Arachnid. ## Production ### Development as Bug Hunt at Outpost 7 Since the release of RoboCop (1987), producer Jon Davison had aimed to develop another project that would reunite key members of its creative team, including writer Edward Neumeier and stop motion animator Phil Tippett. Neumeier and his co-writer Michael Miner had struggled to develop new story ideas in the intervening years and, realizing their partnership was no longer effective, Neumeier began working alone on a story treatment titled Bug Hunt at Outpost 7. His treatment was intended to be a comedic, jingoistic, and xenophobic war film pitting the heroes against insects—chosen due to his wife's fear of them—set against the backdrop of a teenage romance story. In December 1991, Neumeier brought his treatment to Davison at Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, which also headquartered TriStar Pictures, with whom Davison had a pre-existing development deal. Davison realized the treatment bore similarities to the 1959 science fiction novel, Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein. The novel had received a strongly divided reception on its release for promoting military power and necessary violence while criticizing liberal social programs, but had remained a popular work. Neumeier and Davison considered directly adapting Starship Troopers, but Davison assumed the film adaptation rights would already be taken and encouraged Neumeier to continue with his treatment, retitled Outpost 7. By late 1992, Neumeier had completed the Outpost 7 treatment, alternately known as Bug Hunt. Davison presented it to TriStar executive Chris Lee, who rejected it. Neumeier and Davison learned that the rights for Starship Troopers were available and instead pitched an adaptation of the novel using elements of Outpost 7. Lee was more receptive, and the pair also gained support from other executives, including TriStar head of production Mike Medavoy, who had supported their work on RoboCop. The rights to Starship Troopers were purchased and Neumeier began adapting Outpost 7 to more closely fit Heinlein's novel. ### Development as Starship Troopers Progress was slow as TriStar regularly replaced executives, including Medavoy, and high cost or risk projects, like Starship Troopers, were more closely scrutinized. Davison spent much of 1993 securing several key crew including Tippett and RoboCop director Paul Verhoeven. Neumeier and Davison said Verhoeven was their only choice to direct Starship Troopers because they determined the fantastical creatures, genre, and political subtext suited his creative sensibilities. Verhoeven recruited Alan Marshall as a producer, having worked with him on Basic Instinct (1992) and his most recent project Showgirls (1995). Despite Verhoeven's previous successes leading into the early 1990s, he was in need of a promising project as his efforts to develop the pirate adventure Mistress of the Seas and the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring Crusade had failed. Showgirls would go on to fail financially and earn him the worst reviews of his career. By 1994, Tristar remained reluctant to move Starship Troopers into pre-production. Key crew members, including Davison and Verhoeven, decided to produce test footage to demonstrate their intended visual style and tone. TriStar paid $225,000 toward development of the "Bug Test", a brief scene filmed at Vasquez Rocks near Los Angeles on July 21, 1994. Although still busy filming Showgirls, Verhoeven directed the sequence, which was filmed by John Hora and a 30-person crew. The sequence depicts a soldier (played by Mitch Gaylord) being pursued and killed by two Warrior Bugs, which were animated by Tippett Studio; Neumeier makes a cameo appearance as a dead soldier. The visual effects were finished by September, and the footage screened for TriStar executives in early October. Executives including Lee and Mark Canton were impressed with the visual effects and did not realize they were computer-generated imagery (CGI). They approved moving into pre-production, but other executives remained non-committal on providing any substantial funding. In early 1995, Davison developed a detailed budget totalling $90 million, based on Neumeier's third draft. TriStar rejected this amount, citing the financial failure of the $200 million-budgeted Waterworld (1995), which resulted in the firing of several executives at Universal Pictures. TriStar executives determined that, to move forward, the cost of Starship Troopers had to be split with a business partner. Davison screened the Bug Test for potential suitors, attracting the interest of Walt Disney Studios. An agreement was reached between TriStar, its parent company Sony Pictures, and Disney to produce Starship Troopers via TriStar and Disney's Touchstone Pictures, splitting the budget costs and box office profits evenly, in exchange for Touchstone receiving all distribution rights to the film outside the United States and Canada. Each studio was also given creative input on the film and its marketing. ### Writing Neumeier began adapting the Starship Troopers novel at the beginning of 1993, working from his office in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles. He was concerned about how to translate the tone of Heinlein's work because of the controversy surrounding its release, which identified Heinlein as alternately a conservative, militarist, libertarian, and fascist. The novel espouses the benefits of military service, citizenship, and masculinity. Heinlein described the central theme as being "that a man, to be truly human, must be unhesitatingly willing at all times to lay down his life for his fellow man. [This theme] is based on the twin concepts of love and duty—and how they are related to the survival of our race". Neuimeier and Davison wanted to accurately depict the novel's viewpoint and believed that audiences would appreciate the concept of a failing democracy and stricter cultural controls. Certain aspects of the novel were challenging for Neumeier to adapt. While he considered the first and third acts narratively strong, he felt the middle act—focusing on Rico's boot camp experience—was an overly long piece preaching to Heinlein's readership, which would not translate well to film. To address this, he identified key elements such as the high school opening, boot camp, battles, and the underlying philosophy and sociopolitics. To compensate for the slower second act, he expanded on certain themes, including the teenage romance, drawing from his own experiences of pursuing women who had no interest in him. The first draft was completed on July 8, 1993. It remained generally faithful to Heinlein's novel, including a secondary alien race known as the "Skinnies"; the "Bounce", a technology allowing infantry members to make jet-assisted superhuman jumps; and power armor, which granted the troops superhuman strength. A copy was sent to Heinlein's wife, who was pleased with it. Verhoeven tried, and failed, to read the novel, finding it uninteresting and too politically right-wing. He had Neumeier summarize the narrative, and found it militaristic, fascistic, and overly supportive of armed conflict, which clashed with Verhoeven's childhood experiences in the German-occupied Netherlands during World War II. Verhoeven decided to use the basic plot to satirize and undermine the book's themes by deconstructing the concepts of totalitarianism, fascism, and militarism, saying: "All the way through I wanted the audience to be asking, 'Are [the characters] crazy?'" His contributions to Neumeier's second draft included developing the romantic subplot between Rico and Carmen, and combining the male character Dizzy with a Neumeier-created female character called Ronnie who was romantically interested in Rico. This, in turn, led Neumeier to develop romantic triangles between Dizzy, Rico, Carmen, and Zander. The Skinnies were removed, because Verhoeven thought depicting an additional alien race would be confusing, while queen bugs and advanced canines called neo-dogs were considered financially unviable. Other financially motivated changes included the removal of the Bounce and the Drop, a method of inserting troops from orbit in capsules that shed consecutive layers during landing. Preliminary designs were made of the capsules, but attached to parachutes, which did not match the intended aesthetic, and adding rockets was deemed impractical, because it would have required numerous different visual effects and taken too much time to accomplish. In addition to cost, the Bounce was removed, because the troops would look like they were on pogo sticks and it made it too easy to avoid Arachnid attacks. The Arachnids were made more insect-like, as Verhoeven did not want them to wield weaponry or act like humanoids. The most controversial omission from the novel, for fans, was the power armor. Davison said that despite the importance of the armor, it was financially impossible to create hundreds of suits for the cast and extras. He and Verhoeven initially agreed to use the power armor sparingly, and integrate various different ideas such as the Bounce into them, but later determined it gave the troops too much of a combat advantage. The FedNet sequences, the main source of information in the future, were invented for the film, representing how Neumeier believed television and computers would eventually be combined. Neumeier completed his third and final draft by early 1995. Verhoeven described the script as being about contemporary American politics, such as a lack of gun control and increasing capital punishment under Texas governor George W. Bush, which he believed could potentially lead to fascism. The characters of Starship Troopers, he said, were "fascists who aren't aware of their fascism". He said: "If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn't work, no one will listen to me. So I'm going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships but it's only good for killing fucking Bugs\!" ### Pre-production Under the company name Big Bug Pictures, the Starship Troopers team worked in a large suite in the Astaire Building at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California. While pre-production began in earnest by September 1995, after Verhoeven concluded work on Showgirls, he had already spent several months producing over 4,000 storyboard images of the Starship Troopers script. Conscious that the Arachnids, among other CGI elements, would be added after filming, he wanted a detailed image of how each scene would be set out during filming. Storyboard artists Robin Richesson and Giacomo Ghiazzi refined Verhoeven's storyboards, the majority of the comic book–style art being done by Ghiazzi. Many key crew members were hired in 1996, including Verhoeven's long-time cinematographer Jost Vacano, as well as Vic Armstrong (second unit director and stunt coordinator), Mark Goldblatt (editor), John Richardson (special effects supervisor), Basil Poledouris (music composer), and Robert Latham Brown (production manager). Tippett also hired the nearly 100 additional staff required to realize the Arachnids, including Craig Hayes (visual effects artist) and Trey Stokes (animation department head). Davison's responsibilities focused on the special effects, while Marshall was concerned more with the filming. Production designer Allan Cameron and location manager Bill Bowling scouted several filming locations, but rejected most as they did not consider them particularly unique. Others, such as the Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada had too many environmental restrictions which could delay filming, and obtaining the necessary permits was slow due to an extended period of U.S. government shutdowns. Bowling identified Hell's Half Acre, located just outside Casper, Wyoming, which offered colorful buttes and pinnacles to portray the alien planets of Klendathu and Planet P, although it was rife with rattlesnakes. The location was remote, about or an hour's drive from the production office and hotels for the cast and crew. It offered other logistical challenges as it was generally undeveloped land, requiring the production to build roads for the trucks carrying gear into the canyons for filming. Anything that could not be transported by road was lowered by helicopter. Construction of some on-location sets such as Whiskey Outpost camp began in February 1996 and took six weeks. The local government was supportive of the project, subsidizing the building of the roads and camp. Another, more easily accessible location, Barry Barber Ranch near Kadoka, South Dakota, and the Badlands National Park, featured little vegetation and a smooth, undulating landscape, which was chosen to portray Tango Urilla. As pre-production continued, Davison remained concerned about TriStar's ongoing executive turnover and its inconsistent commitment to funding. Verhoeven believed the repeated regime changes at the studio worked in their favor, as the project was overlooked until it was too late to cancel it. ### Casting Verhoeven wanted a cast who visually embodied the Aryan, blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful image he had perceived in the Nazi propaganda films Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938) by Leni Riefenstahl. He focused on popular film actors in their late teens and early twenties, but realized that many of the contemporary stars he wanted, such as Chris O'Donnell and Christian Slater, were already in their thirties—which would make the characters seem less naive—or committed to other projects. Although television actors were still generally overlooked when casting films, the production looked at shows such as Melrose Place and Beverly Hills, 90210, which featured young, photogenic, but less well known actors, such as Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, and Dina Meyer. Van Dien performed five auditions for the Rico role, and underwent eight months of training after securing it, gaining of muscle and losing from his waist. Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon also auditioned, but Verhoeven believed Van Dien closely fit the Riefenstahl aesthetic. Richards also performed five auditions to portray Carmen in November and December 1995, before finally screen testing against Van Dien. Meyer's agent recommended auditioning for Carmen, but she wanted to portray Dizzy because she thought she could convey the character's "heart" and vulnerability at being overlooked by Rico because her toughness makes her seem like just another guy. Neil Patrick Harris was mainly known for portraying a child doctor on Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989–1993), and wanted a project that would shed that image as he moved into his adult career. He described Jenkins as almost two separate characters, Rico's geeky and funny friend who becomes worn, pale, and troubled by his responsibilities. Making his feature film debut, Patrick Muldoon described his character Zander as ambiguous and competitive, while Verhoeven and Neumeier saw him as possessing a darker side. Jake Busey considered Ace Levy to be an integral character necessary for releasing the tension for the audience by finding the humor in macabre situations. Seth Gilliam said his character is like a Vietnam War veteran who cannot adapt to life outside war. Clancy Brown portrays Sergeant Zim, a "crusty, macho, jingoistic, ultimately admirable drill instructor". Brown based his performance on archetypical drill instructors from military films such as The D.I. (1957) and Full Metal Jacket (1987), as well as taking guidance from retired Marine captain Dale Dye, who said that Brown should act as if his soldiers are watching his every move. Verhoeven was a fan of Michael Ironside, having attempted to cast him in RoboCop and giving him a central role in Total Recall (1990). Ironside's Jean Rasczak appears early in Starship Troopers to set the tone, and was an original creation combining two characters from the novel: Rico's teacher, Lieutenant Colonel Jean V. Dubois, and Lieutenant Rasczak, a heroic soldier. Members of the principal cast, including Van Dien, Meyer, Busey, Gilliam and Curnal Aulisio, and 24 extras undertook twelve days of military training, led by Dye, from April 17, 1996, to the start of filming. Conducted in Hell's Half Acre, the training included basic combat skills and tactics as Dye perceived they may evolve centuries in the future. Activities included a daily 3-mile (4.8 km) run, marching, and weapon handling. Those involved slept in open-air military tents, dealing with the harsh conditions, including of snow and ice following a blizzard, and windstorms. Extra Julia Rupkalvis's experience during the training led to her becoming a key assistant to Dye while training the hundreds of extras portraying troopers. As Richards was not in the infantry cast, she did not have to participate, but chose to anyway, later remarking how she, Van Dien, and Busey bonded while huddling together for warmth during the blizzard. ### Filming Principal photography began on April 29, 1996, with six weeks of filming in Hell's Half Acre. The area featured extreme weather conditions, including hot days, frigid evenings, blizzards, and 80-mile-per-hour (130 km/h) wind storms that affected much of the on-site equipment, requiring replacements to be flown in on a regular basis. It was also temporarily evacuated after torrential rain mixed with bentonite in the soil, creating a slick surface. The crew returned two weeks later to find that miles of electrical cables, some equipment, and even cars had sunk into the mud. Only a few days of filming were lost, however, as a local warehouse had been converted into a soundstage. The conditions also caused respiratory and exhaustion issues among the crew, and many were treated for heat stroke after wearing heavy costumes in the heat, including Busey. Production was paused for a week while he recovered, costing $1.5 million a day. A Klendathu night battle sequence filmed there featured about 1,300 background trooper extras for each night of filming. A steadicam was used for most filming, with occasional handheld footage for battle scenes, inspired by the 1944 Normandy landings, to make the audience feel like a part of the scene. Most effects scenes were shot early in the schedule so there was sufficient time for the effects team to complete their work. The cast struggled with scenes in which they had to interact with blank space that would later be filled with CGI creations. Cardboard cutouts, tennis balls, flags, and even Verhoeven wielding a broom were methods used to indicate where the creatures would be. In May, during the Memorial Day holiday weekend, an oncoming driver struck a car carrying crew, resulting in the deaths of two crew members, their driver, and severely injuring television personality Rachel Campos, the girlfriend of one of the dead crew members. Counselling was offered for the remaining cast and crew, who provided donations towards Campos's recovery. Filming moved to Barry Barber Ranch on June 14, for scenes set on Klendathu and Tango Urilla, before returning to Casper on June 26. The post Tango Urilla battle celebration was filmed at Vasquez Rocks. On the crew's flight to Los Angeles on June 29, an intoxicated crew member mentioned a bomb, resulting in the plane being evacuated, cargo searched, and all passengers being detained. The crew member was arrested while the remaining team waited another day for a flight, losing a rest day and a day of filming. Filming on sets began in early July, including the Buenos Aires education center classroom, biology lab, and Jenkin's basement sets, which were built at Sony Studios. The Jump Ball scene was filmed at the Long Beach Pyramid arena. Van Dien, Meyer, and Muldoon performed many of their own stunts for the scene, apart from flips and somersaults, and encouraged each other to be physically rough. The exam results scene and the prom were both filmed at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Baldwin Park. The Federal Recruitment Center scene and following segment in which Carmen leaves by train were filmed over four days at the Los Angeles Convention Center, which Verhoeven chose because he considered its architecture to be futuristic and clean. Some scenes were also filmed at the Park Plaza Hotel. Camp Currie boot camp scenes were filmed at Mile Square Regional Park in Fountain Valley, which Cameron favored for its abandoned World War II blimp runway onto which they installed a top coat of tarmac and paint for a parade ground. It also fit their image of a low-pollution Earth, being surrounded by flat ground and trees. The co-ed nude shower scene was filmed on a set at Sony Pictures with about fifteen cast members. The set was cleared of all but the cast, Verhoeven, and Vacano, who also undressed at the cast's request. A separate nude scene was written for Richards, but she refused to take part, as she did not see the purpose. Armstrong's second unit filmed action sequences as well as the complex stunts and special effect scenes that would be time-consuming for the main unit. He delegated much of the main unit stunt work to Dickey Beer to avoid overworking himself. The fight between Rico and Zander was mainly performed by Van Dien and Muldoon while wearing padding suits. Van Dien was injured during a stunt that involved him riding on the back of a gigantic moving fiberglass "Tanker Bug" shell. The movement kept slamming him into the shell as he was held in place with ropes, chipping one of his teeth and bruising his ribs over the three and a half days of filming, but he refused to mention the pain and risk stalling filming. One of the more dangerous stunts came near the end of filming, involving Van Dien, Busey, and Richards running out of an Arachnid tunnel followed by a real explosion. Only one take was done and they were told that, if someone tripped, they should pick them up and keep moving. Despite the difficult conditions and obstacles, principal photography concluded on October 16, 1996, only slightly over schedule, after six months of filming generally six days a week. Second unit filming concluded a week later on October 23, after filming various explosions and background scenery. ### Post-production Post-production began in late October 1996, and concluded in August 1997. Starship Troopers was edited by Mark Goldblatt with co-editor Caroline Ross. Goldblatt described Verhoeven as very collaborative, allowing them to interpret his footage in their own way and to provide input during filming on how special effects may be staged. Even so, Goldblatt said Verhoeven was conservative with what he filmed and generally only captured what he wanted with no coverage footage. Some scenes were changed for the release, including trimming the scene of the Brain Bug sucking brains. A separate scene of a soldier being decapitated by an Arachnid was removed preemptively to avoid a restrictive NC-17 release rating. Another scene, of Carmen kissing Rico during the finale, was cut, because test audiences thought it was immoral after Zander's death, and were unconvinced that Carmen could love both men simultaneously. The audiences were also unhappy with Carmen choosing her career over her relationship with Rico and wanted her to die instead of Dizzy. Additional supplemental scenes were filmed during this period, primarily the FedNet propaganda sequences, as there was no time to complete these during principal photography. Filmed over a week in late January 1997, with many of the same crew, including Verhoeven and Vacano, mainly on location in and around Los Angeles, the FedNet sequences included survivors digging through the remains of Buenos Aires, shot on a vacant lot in downtown Los Angeles that was dressed with broken concrete and flame effects. Another scene of a psychic with a third eye was filmed in a Delta Air Lines hangar at the Los Angeles International Airport. Two rough cut screenings were held for executives on May 29 and 30, 1997, receiving a positive reaction with discussions of a sequel. Starship Troopers is reported to have had a final budget of $100–$110 million. ### Visual effects About half of the budget for Starship Troopers was dedicated to realizing the required 500 visual effect shots. Tippett Studio was mainly responsible for producing effects relating to the Arachnids while Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI) was tasked with spaceship effects. Davison wanted to use other studios, but it was made clear to him by studio executives that the film would not receive financing without using the in-house studio. Jim Martin and SPI art director Michael Scheffe were mainly responsible for the design of the crafts, with Martin providing broad outlines which were given greater detail and a more consistent appearance by Scheffe. Using SPI would lead to production problems, with their contributions falling months behind schedule and those effects that were completed being deemed insufficient by the filmmakers, resulting in the hiring of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Boss Film Studios to complete the effects work. Many miniatures were made of the ships for different scenes, some of them measuring up to long. Designing the Arachnids was a collaborative process between Tippett, Hayes, Davison, Neumeier, and Verhoeven. The final designs included the Warrior, Tanker, Plasma, Hopper, and Brain bugs. While CGI was the main method of realizing the creatures, some practical appliances were built by Amalgamated Dynamics, including two full-scale mechanized Warrior bugs capable of lifting an adult in their jaws. ### Music The score for Starship Troopers was composed by Basil Poledouris over six months. Poledouris intended to score the film as an action movie, but Verhoeven wanted the music to offer a realistic background for the characters' experiences. As a result, Poledouris focused on creating a sense of excitement, passion, and poignancy. Verhoeven chose Poledouris's theme for the Rodger Young spaceship, titled "Klendathu Drop", as the basis for the overall score. Poledouris developed themes for specific characters and relationships, including the one between Rico and Dizzy, whom he considered the "heart" of Starship Troopers, but did not create a theme for the Arachnids as he wanted their distinct noises to contrast with the score. The score was recorded on a Sony Studios recording stage between June and September 1997, with a full orchestra of 97 musicians using acoustic and percussion instruments. Evelyn Oz, a band including Poledouris's daughter, Zoë, performs two songs during the prom scene: an original song, "Into It", and "I Have Not Been to Oxford Town", composed by David Bowie. ## Release ### Marketing Starship Troopers was initially scheduled for release on July 2, 1997, but was later pushed back to July 25, then September, and finally November 7. These shifts were made to allow more time to complete special effects work and increase public awareness of the film, but it was also thought that Air Force One and Men in Black, which starred popular actors, were more commercially viable options for Sony Pictures. Alan Marshall stated that no one involved in Starship Troopers was happy about delaying an anticipated blockbuster to after the peak theatrical season. The first trailer for Starship Troopers was released on November 22, 1996, appearing before Star Trek: First Contact, with the second playing before Men in Black and Air Force One in 1997. ### Box office The premiere of Starship Troopers took place on November 4, 1997, in Westwood, Los Angeles, with an afterparty at the Museum of Flying. In the United States and Canada, the film was released on November 7, 1997. During its opening weekend, the film grossed approximately $22.1 million from 2,971 theaters—an average of $7,424 per theater—making it the top film of the weekend, beating out Bean ($12.7 million) and I Know What You Did Last Summer ($6.5 million), both in their fourth weekend. The New York Times gave 1,000 tickets for Bean to young boys as a test, and recorded that many then snuck into the R-rated Starship Troopers. In its second weekend, the film dropped to second place, grossing $10 million, ahead of the re-release of The Little Mermaid ($9.8 million) and behind the debut of The Jackal ($15.2 million). This represented a 54% decrease from the previous weekend's box office. In its third weekend, Starship Troopers fell to seventh place with a box office gross of $4.7 million, and left the top 10 highest-grossing films by its sixth weekend in mid-December. The film left most theaters by the end of the year with a total box office gross of about $54.8 million, making it the 33rd highest-grossing film of the year in the U.S. and Canada. Outside the U.S. and Canada, the film is estimated to have grossed an additional $66.3 million, giving it a worldwide box office of $121 million, and making it the 34th highest-grossing film worldwide that year. Verhoeven said that Davison had told him it would "never make its money back. He saw there was a problem with the American audience better than I had." ## Reception ### Critical response Starship Troopers received generally negative reviews and was unpopular with critics and audiences on release. Audience polls by CinemaScore found that moviegoers gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale. Many reviewers did not interpret Starship Troopers as a satire and believed that its fascist themes were sincere. An editorial in The Washington Post described the film as pro-fascist, made, directed, and written by Nazis. Stephen Hunter said the film was "spiritually" and "psychologically" Nazi and born of a Nazi-like imagination. Hunter described it as a "perversion" of Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, which portrays the physical and mental tolls of war, by glorifying the horrors of war. Others, such as Empire, argued that the "constant fetishizing of weaponry" and "[Aryan] cast", combined with the militaristic imagery in RoboCop and Total Recall, made it seem as though Verhoeven admired Heinlein's world more than he claimed. Some critics, such as Roger Ebert and Owen Gleiberman, recognized the satire, but often found that this commentary was indistinguishable from the promotion of the fascist utopia it was satirizing. Salon argued that even with good satire, it is "self-defeatingly stupid" to use it in a story that wants its audience to care about its characters, and that Starship Troopers fails to replace Heinlein's themes with a worthwhile ideal. The Los Angeles Times wrote that Verhoeven had "lost his touch" with satire by failing to respect his audiences' intelligence and make the world of Starship Troopers interesting or convincing. Kenneth Turan and James Berardinelli considered the film among the most "jaw-dropping" and easily digestible films of that year, compared to several other blockbuster projects which had been disappointing. Berardinelli said that, at its best, Starship Troopers replicated the thrills of Aliens (1986), while emulating television teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210 in its worst moments. Salon's review described Starship Troopers as an unintelligent and "discordant" combination of ultraviolence, poor acting, and special effects. Ebert said that Heinlein's novel was written for juveniles and the film would only be of interest to younger audiences. Janet Maslin and Turan found Neuemeier's script to be unsuccessful in transitioning from the teenage love story to the carnage of war, but that Starship Troopers remained watchable as a live-action comic book. Turan, in particular, said that unlike its contemporaries, such as Independence Day and Twister (both 1996), Starship Troopers benefitted from a lack of pretence that the effects were less important than emotions or "pseudo-sensitivity". Ebert concluded that, apart from the satire, Starship Troopers lacked any humanity or basic entertainment value with which to establish a connection to the audience. Turan's and Empire's reviews, among others, were dismissive of the central cast, describing them as "no name" models that offered only an all-American superficial Aryan stereotype of beauty. Gleiberman wrote that their limited acting abilities made some of their critically derided peers seem like "classical thespians", which made it difficult to become invested in the core narrative. While Berardinelli concurred with this assessment, he complimented the cast for their efforts, appeal, and enthusiasm in the roles. Verhoeven later said Starship Troopers could have benefitted from casting actors for their ability instead of looks. Some critics, such as Berardinelli, said that Starship Troopers would not work with good "or even competent" actors. Berardinelli also praised the cast for being "appealing and enthusiastic", particularly Van Dien and Meyer for retaining some human interest once the special-effects sequences become more prominent. Salon's review found the violence consistent with Verhoeven's previous works, with Gleiberman describing it as offering a "kinky-camp ghoulishness". Berardinelli and Maslin praised the tension, scale, and impressive visuals of the action sequences, in which Verhoeven revels in the contrast between his characters' earnestness and the violent and gory imagery. Others, such as Jonathan Rosenbaum and Ebert, wrote that the scenes grew tiresome because the alien creatures had no personality, lacking any culture or discernible language, which rendered them idelogically "boring ciphers" inhabiting uninteresting planets. Despite his praise, Berardinelli said audiences would quickly become desensitized to the extreme gore. ### Accolades At the 2nd Golden Satellite Awards in 1998, Starship Troopers was nominated for Best Motion Picture (Animated or Mixed Media). For the 70th Academy Awards, Tippett, Scott E. Anderson, Alec Gillis, and John Richardson were nominated for Best Visual Effects. Starship Troopers was also nominated for Best Action Sequence at the MTV Movie Awards, as well as receiving a nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation from the Hugo Awards. The film was nominated for Worst Picture at the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, losing to Batman & Robin. ## Post-release ### Performance analysis Retrospective analyses have attempted to explain the cause of Starship Troopers's poor performance and reception. The film generally failed to connect with both critics and audiences, who found its mixture of satire, violence, gore, and "cheesy" performances unappealing. Other industry experts believe it was also adversely affected by the quantity of successful science fiction and genre films already released that year, such as The Lost World: Jurassic Park ($618.6 million) and The Fifth Element ($263.9 million). Starship Troopers was also released just before Titanic ($1.8 billion), which dominated theaters, and other anticipated films like Alien Resurrection, Scream 2, and Tomorrow Never Dies. American historian Robert Sklar suggested that audiences had grown tired of alien war films and science fiction adventure in general after the recent releases of Mars Attacks\!, the blockbuster Independence Day (both 1996), and the Star Wars special editions (1997). The film's reputation was also damaged by a report by The Washington Post accusing Starship Troopers of promoting Nazism. Verhoeven said: "We were accused ... of being neo-Nazis\! ... They couldn't see that all I have done is ironically create a fascist utopia." This narrative was perpetuated in European news publications despite Verhoeven's efforts to explain the satirical portrayal of fascism. Verhoeven believed this dissuaded audiences from seeing Starship Troopers and, alongside poor word of mouth from audiences that did attend, the U.S. box office gross dropped a then rare 50% in its second weekend. He added that audiences were not happy about Dizzy dying instead of Carmen. The film's title was also seen as a contributing factor, leading audiences to expect a light-hearted adventure like Star Wars (1977). Verhoeven blamed the studio's poor marketing of Starship Troopers in the United States by labelling it as an action film, leading critics and audiences to overlook the satire. A Los Angeles Times editorial speculated the decision was possibly deliberate because satire films did not perform as well as the action genre. Verhoeven anecdotally remarked that it was appropriately marketed as a satire in England. ### Home media The film score was released on compact disc (CD) by Varèse Sarabande in 1997, but was criticized for a short runtime of 30 minutes. Bootleg copies were made containing additional material using the score from the film's DVD release. Starship Troopers was released on VHS in 1998 and on DVD in 1999. The DVD features a documentary about the making of the film, actor screen tests, commentary by Verhoeven and Neumeier, and deleted scenes including an alternate ending in which Rico and Carmen officially rekindle their romance. In 2002, a two-disc Special Edition DVD was released with additional features, including commentary by Verhoeven, Neumeier, and the cast, breakdowns of the special effects, and documentaries about the making of the film, creating the Arachnids and spaceships, the visual effects, and scene breakdowns. Starship Troopers was released on Blu-ray in 2008, containing many previously released extras and the addition of FedNet mode, which places a graphic overlay to the film with pop-up facts. A limited edition two-disc CD of the score was released in 2016, containing additional tracks. A 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray remastered version was released for the film's 20th anniversary with previously released extras. A 25th anniversary 4K Blu-ray was released in 2022, in a limited edition steelbook case, and includes a reunion discussion between Neumeier, Van Dien, Richards, Meyer, Ironside, Brown, Busey, and Gilliam. ### Other media Coinciding with its theatrical release, Sony had restructured its business to focus on translating its films, including Starship Troopers, into media franchises that would extend their profitability beyond their time in theaters. Starship Troopers merchandise included miniatures, action figures, and "Insect Touch", a three-issue comic book by Dark Horse Comics. Toy manufacturer Galoob developed twelve different products including action figures and vehicles. Retailers were reluctant to stock toys for an R-rated film, with both Wal-Mart and Target, which represented about 20% of all action figure sales, declining, although Toys "R" Us and KB Toys agreed. Sony executives called it an "open secret" that children were attending R-rated films. Author Paul Sammon spent six months accompanying filming for Starship Troopers, through pre-production and leading up to the film's release. His resulting work was released alongside the film as The Making of Starship Troopers. A CGI animated television series, Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, was released in 1999. Based on elements of the film and Heinlein's novel, the series ran for forty episodes. The 1976 board game Starship Troopers was re-released and repackaged alongside the film as Starship Troopers: Prepare for Battle. A Starship Troopers pinball machine was also released in 1997. There have also been several game adaptations based on the film, including Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy (2000), Starship Troopers (2005)—which features Van Dien returning to voice Rico—and Starship Troopers: Terran Command (2022). ## Themes and analysis ### Politics and propaganda Starship Troopers explores themes including patriotism, authoritarianism, militarism, colonialism, and xenophobia. Verhoeven interpreted Heinlein's novel as fascistic, nationalistic, totalitarian, and in favor of military rule, something antithetical to the director's own wartime experiences, and used Starship Troopers to deconstruct and undermine these themes. Iconography inspired by the German Nazi regime and Italian National Fascist Party appear throughout Starship Troopers as symbols of the United Citizen Federation (UCF). The UCF flag, bearing an eagle, resembles the Nazi coat of arms; officer uniforms are similar to those worn by the Nazi secret police—the Gestapo—including the insignia, and the symbol on infantry uniforms references Benito Mussolini's Blackshirts. Neumeier said the Nazi uniforms were used, in part, because the Nazi outfits looked good, but Verhoeven also wanted to use that aesthetic in "an artistic way". Although some contemporary critics and audiences considered Starship Troopers to be an endorsement of fascism, Verhoeven said, "whenever you see something that you think is fascist, you should know that the filmmakers agree with your opinion". Other aspects of the Nazi regime influence Starship Troopers, from the architecture of Albert Speer, to propaganda films such as Olympia. The first scene of Starship Troopers, an advertisement for the mobile infantry, emulates scenes from Triumph of the Will, including the dialogue, "I'm doing my part\!" Influence was also taken from writer Susan Sontag's 1975 essay, "Fascinating Fascisms", that identifies key aspects of Nazism, such as the "cult of beauty", "fetishism of courage", "repudiation of the intellect", and serving the community at the expense of the self. Verhoeven cast attractive actors, described by Entertainment Weekly critic Darren Franich as conveying the Aryan ideal of beauty, to "seduce the audience into joining [Starship Troopers's] society ... but then ask, 'What are you really joining up for?'" Screenwriter Mark Rosenthal said that the dangers of exposing the audience to an attractive fascism are necessary to lead them to the possibility of progressive politics. In the novel, Rico is revealed at the end to be Filipino, a deliberate choice to make readers empathise with the character before revealing he is not white. Verhoeven made Rico white to further satirize the fascistic messaging. Franich and The A.V. Club critic Scott Tobias wrote that the filmmakers portray the main characters as "petty and stupid", but that the film's best joke lies in Rico not being very intelligent but, in turn, becoming the ideal citizen and perfect tool for war, abandoning any personal hopes and dreams outside military life. Professor Lene Hansen challenged Verhoeven's assertion that Starship Troopers portrays a feminist fascism in which men and women are treated entirely equally. Focusing on Dizzy, Hansen wrote that while the character is portrayed as equal to and even superior to male characters as an athlete and soldier, seemingly in service to the greater collective, but her dying words imply her actions are motivated by her feelings for Rico and her sacrifice is therefore romantic, conflicting with the film's fascist ideals of collective responsibility and heroic masculinity. Hansen concluded that Starship Troopers ultimately reinforces classical fascist gender norms, in which men are central to the narrative and women are secondary or serve a supporting role. The propaganda depicted on the "FedNet" uses extreme examples to satirize the UCF, such as children holding weapons or stamping on cockroaches while an adult looks on happily, as well as slogans such as "Join the mobile infantry and save the world" and "Service guarantees citizenship". Writer Darren Mooney considered the FedNet to be prescient of the increasing prominence of fake news, presenting stories that those in positions of power want the populace to see, emphasizing patriotism and duty, while offering an illusion of choice and enlightenment by asking: "Would you like to know more?" Verhoeven said the query begs the question: "Do you want this type of society? Do you want to dive even further into this system that already exists in America?" The youth are indoctrinated through these slogans and propaganda, and information relating to the Arachnids is intended to provoke a xenophobic response, both convincing the protagonists that their cause is righteous and presenting the Arachnids as inferior. The A.V. Club wrote that Starship Troopers presents a society that has been convinced to trade its freedoms, rights, and identities for security. Starship Troopers is also Verhoeven's response to events he perceived in contemporary American politics, such as limited gun restrictions and an increase of capital punishment, which he believed could eventually result in open fascism, as well as films that glorified the U.S. military and depicted a casual attitude to violence. Franich found similarities between Starship Troopers and the action film Top Gun (1986), which follows physically strong, young, and attractive United States Navy pilots combating a vague enemy. Several action films from the 1990s, such as Independence Day (1996) and Air Force One (1997), offered similarly jingoistic pro-American and pro-military messages. ### Citizenship and violence In the militaristic society depicted in Starship Troopers, many rights are reserved only for citizens comprising only those who have served in the military. Voting is presented as an act of force and supreme authority, a right that must be earned instead of given. Rasczak tells his students: "Violence has resolved more conflicts than anything else. The contrary opinion that violence doesn't solve anything is merely wishful thinking at worst." The boot camp shower scene involves several characters discussing their reason for enlistment, such as being able to serve as a politician, have children, receive a scholarship, or just not having to work on a farm. Verhoeven said that the purpose of the scene—one of Starship Troopers's most infamous—is that since all of the characters are fascists, they have no libido and do not react to each other's exposure, instead only discussing their careers and combat. The nudity was criticized, but Verhoeven believed it was hypocritical to focus on sexual scenes while allowing the depiction of extreme violence. The film professor Florentine Strzelczyk opined that the infantry's sexual energy is redirected into an "orgasmic" violent display of fluids, guts, and gore. The author Leighton Grist wrote that citizenship being a requirement for most procreation is similar to fascist policies of eugenics. Although humanity is mainly presented as victims of the Arachnid threat, aspects of Starship Troopers reveal that humanity may have instigated the conflict by invading Arachnid worlds, and the creatures are defending themselves. The Arachnid's asteroid that strikes Earth is used to justify a full-scale war. In her analysis, Strzelczyk identified critical commentary of the war provided by a journalist who queries if humans provoked the Arachnids and whether both species should leave the other alone. However, when the journalist is killed by an Arachnid in a bloody display, his critique is visually erased and his reconciliatory opinion invalidated. Starship Troopers presents a cycle of war, in which Earth's youths are emboldened by the propaganda slogans to become readily disposable infantry. These soldiers' orders are to kill anything inhuman and strategic failures are solved by using more soldiers. The writer Lloyd Farley considered the gory and explicit scenes depicting the dead as being intended to overtly display the "horrors of war" in a society solely dedicated to conflict. The countless soldier deaths on Planet P are quickly forgotten as troops celebrate their victory and capture of the Brain Bug, with the potential promise this will lead to the end of the war, but no actual conclusion is offered. The Brain Bug suggests the Arachnids are not significantly different to and are justified in exterminating humanity to preserve their own race. This violence is reinforced with rewards, such as Rico's repeated promotions, but these openings often arise because his predecessor was killed. Starship Troopers culminates with the surviving protagonists not disagreeing with this system or choosing to fight against it, but becoming a part of it by appearing in recruitment propaganda to enlist the next generation of troops. ## Legacy ### Critical reassessment In a 2013 retrospective by The Atlantic, critic Calum Marsh said that while Starship Troopers's critical reputation had not improved significantly since its release, it was gradually shifting in a positive direction, with some critics and writers considering it an "unsung masterpiece". Other retrospective analyses, from the early 2000s to the 2020s, described it as among the most subversive and misunderstood Hollywood studio films ever made, undermined by critics and audiences who misinterpreted the anti-fascist satire as an endorsement. The Atlantic and The Verge in 2020, described it as an obvious satire, in hindsight, that was released at the wrong time, amid an era of prosperity in the United States during the late 1990s when American audiences may not have seen, or wanted to see, the criticisms of their own society. The marketing was also blamed, which presented Starship Troopers as a typical science fiction action film, making it easy for audiences not expecting satire to misinterpret it. Other publications argued that Starship Troopers was an example of Poe's law, where views are presented to such an extreme that it becomes impossible for audiences to understand if it is parody or serious. A 2024 analysis by Vice described the modern discourse as divided between those who praise Starship Troopers's satire, and those who believe that, despite the satire, the film ultimately glorifies the "Aryan characters, their militarized society, and their fight against the supposedly inhuman bugs." Opinions on the film changed alongside societal shifts, making the satire more obvious, particularly in the 2010s as its critiques of right-wing militarism, the military–industrial complex, reactionary violence, and American jingoism made it seem ahead of its time. In a 2020 retrospective for The New Yorker, David Roth argued that Starship Troopers's message had become more meaningful because it presents a narrative in which humanity, built on a culture of fascism and violence, "gets its ass kicked", and its only solution is to inflict more violence, to little success. Roth further contrasted the culture of violence to contemporary police brutality against peaceful protests or government attempts to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic through sheer will. Starship Troopers is now considered a cult classic. Some publications have listed it among the best science fiction films ever made, and as one of the best films of the 1990s. In 2021, the British Film Institute (BFI) named it one of the ten greatest science fiction adaptations. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes offers a approval rating from the aggregated reviews of critics, with an average score of . The website's critical consensus reads, "A fun movie...if you can accept the excessive gore and wooden acting." The film has a score of 51 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 20 critics' reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". ### Cultural influence Starship Troopers has continued to generate interest in the decades since its release because of elements which came to reflect future events, such as the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the subsequent actions of the U.S. government and president George W. Bush to convince the American people to surrender certain liberties to enable the subsequent war on terror and defeat their enemies. Retrospectives in the late 2010s and early 2020s have described how a contemporary rise in fascist activity in the U.S. had made Starship Troopers seem prescient and more of a warning than satire. The A.V. Club described Starship Troopers as a "brilliant dissection" of wars and how propaganda is used to justify young people being sent to their deaths against a dehumanized enemy. A 2020 retrospective by The Guardian suggested that, with hindsight, Starship Troopers formed the final installment of Verhoeven's unofficial science fiction action film trilogy about authoritarian governance, preceded by RoboCop (1987) and Total Recall (1990). Empire called it the true spiritual successor to RoboCop's "savage satire" and "gonzo violence", unlike that film's own sequels. Verhoeven followed Starship Troopers with the 2000 science fiction horror Hollow Man, a film that he believed lacked his own personal style as he acquiesced to studio demands. Disillusioned with the Hollywood studio system, and compounded by the failures of Showgirls and Starship Troopers, Verhoeven returned to Europe to work outside of the Hollywood studio system, going on to earn acclaim for his subsequent works, such as Black Book (2006) and Elle (2016). In 2015, Van Dien remarked: "There has not been a week in my life since I did [Starship Troopers] where I can go down the street without someone going 'Rico\!'" Richards has said she loved her character and how people responded to her as a strong female character. Several filmmakers and some actors have named it as an influence or among their favorite films, including Ari Aster, Margaret Brown, Macaulay Culkin, Takashi Miike, David Lowery, Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth, Riley Stearns, Quentin Tarantino, James Wan, and Edgar Wright. Slogans used in the film, such as "I'm doing my part\!" and "Would you like to know more?", have become part of the cultural lexicon. The film's influence can also be seen in other media, such as the animated Futurama ("War Is the H-Word", 2000), the anime Kaguya-sama: Love Is War (2019–2022), and the video game Helldivers 2 (2024). The popularity of Helldivers 2 led to a resurgence of interest in Starship Troopers. ## Sequels and remake Verhoeven had never developed a sequel to his films, but he was interested in directing a second Starship Troopers installment. The relative failure of Starship Troopers derailed plans for a theatrical sequel and Verhoeven moved on to other projects. Starship Troopers was followed by two low-budget, direct-to-home media sequels. The first, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004), was directed by Tippett from a script by Neumeier and followed new characters. Neumeier wrote and directed the second sequel, Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008), for which Van Dien reprised his role as Rico. The series narrative was continued in two CGI animated films: Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012) sees the return of Rico, Jenkins, and Ibanez (with different voice actors), while Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017) was written by Neumeier and features voice acting by Van Dien and Meyer. In the early 2010s, it was reported that the film series could be rebooted to more closely align with Heinlein's novel; there have been no updates since 2016. Verhoeven was unhappy with the concept. In 2021, Van Dien said a television adaptation was being considered by Sony Pictures Television, although talks had stalled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Laborintus II (album)

Laborintus II is an album by the Belgian orchestra Ictus Ensemble, the vocal group Nederlands Kamerkoor, and the American vocalist Mike Patton, which was recorded live at the 2010 Holland Festival. It was released on July 10, 2012, by Ipecac Recordings, and debuted at number 23 on the American Billboard Classical Albums Chart. It was not well received by critics. The album is a recording of the 1965 work of the same name by Italian composer Luciano Berio, whose composition employs elements of jazz and electronic music. The libretto by Edoardo Sanguineti borrows ideas from the works of Dante Alighieri, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and his own 1956 poem "Laborintus". Berio named "memory, death and usury" as the work's main concerns, believing these themes to be present in Dante's work. ## Production Laborintus II is a recording of a 1965 composition by Luciano Berio, written to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri's birth. The libretto, or lyric book, was provided by Edoardo Sanguineti, who included elements of his 1956 poem Laborintus in it. AllMusic's Thom Jurek described the original poem as speaking of "the timelessness of love and mourning, while acting as a critique of the commoditization of all things". In addition to Sanguineti's own poetry, which is based on themes found in Dante's Divina Commedia, Convivio and La Vita Nuova, the work uses excerpts from the Bible and the writings of poets T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Musically, Laborintus II incorporates elements of jazz and electronic music while sometimes evoking the style of 17th-century Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi. Berio described the main structure as a "catalogue, in its medieval meaning" (exemplified by Isidore of Seville's seventh century encyclopaedia Etymologiae), using Dante's themes of "memory, death and usury", and wrote: "Individual words and sentences are sometimes to be regarded as autonomous entities, and sometimes to be perceived as part of the sound structure as a whole." Members of the Dutch choir Nederlands Kamerkoor, who performed on the recording, have also cited usury as a key theme in the work, and described the composition as "an indictment against the practice". The instrumentation for Laborintus II was written as an "extension" of the vocal material; its electronic section is likewise an extension of the instrumental music. Berio used car tyres and a blow-up doll on stage in a performance of the work at the Holland Festival in 1973. The album was recorded live at Amsterdam's Holland Festival on June 18, 2010, in the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. It was performed by Mike Patton and the Belgian Ictus Ensemble conducted by Georges-Elie Octors. Solos were performed by Ictus Ensemble clarinetist Dirk Descheemaeker, trumpeter Loïc Dumoulin, trombonist Michel Massot, double bass player Géry Cambier and percussionists Michael Weilacher and Gerrit Nulens. Nederlands Kamerkoor provided the choral accompaniments. The album marks only the third recording of the composition to have been released since it was first broadcast on French radio by Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française. ## Composition Laborintus II combines orchestral, choral and spoken elements within its three parts. Patton's narration is in Italian, although taped samples feature Sanguineti speaking in English. Patton uses a range of vocal techniques—including whispering, singing and shouting—throughout the work. The choral parts respond to the narration with both unified chanting and disjointed arguing; the overall effect was described by AllMusic as one of "dramatic tension". Three female vocalists accompany Patton's narration. The music incorporates elements of jazz and avant-garde. The orchestra's instruments frequently interrupt both each other and the female voices; some sections of the composition seem as though they are improvised. Laborintus II uses both traditional percussion instruments and electronic sounds, and their interplay serves, according to Jurek, to "erect musical and textural architectures, then disassemble them quickly". Critic Max Feldman has compared the style to that of Raymond Scott. Patton said, regarding the composition, "I can go to Berio or Luigi Nono to listen just like Ennio Morricone. But like all modern music from Italy: it is marginalised elsewhere in the world. Perhaps because of the language barrier, perhaps because it is not easy enough to classify. Berio, who was teaching in California when he wrote this piece, was listening to jazz, to pop, to folk music, and incorporated all of that into his work. Without hierarchy." The first part of the composition features the three female voices creating a mournful tone while the orchestra plays recurring musical passages. The second part is a discordant crescendo as Patton's narration becomes increasingly shouted and the orchestral accompaniment more hyperactive. The third and final part returns to a calmer tone, focusing on drums and jazz woodwind instruments. ## Release and reception Laborintus II was released on July 10, 2012, through Patton's record label Ipecac Recordings. In the United States, the album spent one week on the Billboard Classical Albums Chart at number 23. The album was not well received by critics. Review aggregation website Metacritic awarded it an average score of 58 out of 100 based on eight reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews" by their metric. For the most part, reviewers have considered the album to be challenging and difficult; some believe it to be an acquired taste after repeated listens, while others deemed it impenetrable. The A.V. Club considered the recording to be "challenging, uncompromising, and bordering on inaccessible", but credited it with "hidden payoffs" to reward repeated hearings, including "haunting" and "wraithlike" arrangements. AllMusic—while highlighting that Laborintus II was difficult to grasp at first, by virtue of being a recording of theatrical music—described the album as "a very nearly dazzling endeavor that rewards patience mightily". Consequence of Sound's Carson O'Shoney called it "unlike anything else you’ve ever heard", noting that the music may need more than one hearing to be appreciated, and that it "runs the gauntlet from quiet, jazzy atmospherics to brazen, unsettling primal noise". A review from PopMatters stressed the "challenging" and "exhausting" nature of Berio's composition, adding that the music "constantly emphasises its own unpredictability". It compared the album to the 1970 Miles Davis free jazz album Bitches Brew. Spin magazine's review described it as being "narrated by a rock star prone to screaming", while a reviewer for Q magazine, as quoted by Metacritic, called it "both disorienting and immensely tedious". The complex nature of the piece was summarised by Magnet magazine, whose reviewer felt that it was "hard not to respect Patton's creative adventurousness, but sweet Jesus, the gulf between admiration and enjoyment of one of his projects has never been so wide". Ictus Ensemble's performance was singled out for praise by AllMusic, who wrote about their "bracing freshness and mischievous glee". Likewise, Patton's voice frequently attracted comments by critics who variously described it as "grim, medieval, almost priestly", "alternately authoritative and declarative, reflective, romantic, priestly, and nearly apocalyptic", and "a unique tool that he can shape into whatever he needs it to be". ## Track listing ## Personnel Credits adapted from AllMusic.

Lips Are Movin

2014 single by Meghan Trainor

"Lips Are Movin" is a song by American singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor, taken from her debut major-label studio album, Title (2015). It was written by Trainor and the album's producer, Kevin Kadish. Epic Records premiered the song on MTV News on October 15, 2014, and released it to the United States contemporary hit radio stations on October 21, as the second single from Title. A retro-tinged doo-wop and pop song with girl-group harmonies and bubblegum pop hooks, "Lips Are Movin" was inspired by Trainor's conflict with her record label. However, critical commentary has described it as a song about Trainor leaving her significant other after discovering he is cheating on her. Critics drew similarities between the song's style and that of Trainor's debut single, "All About That Bass" (2014). Some deemed the song catchy, while others criticized its lyrics. In the United States, "Lips Are Movin" reached number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified quadruple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It received platinum or multi-platinum certifications in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, and reached the top 10 on their charts among others. Philip Andelman directed the music video for "Lips Are Movin", which was commissioned by the technology company Hewlett-Packard. The first-ever music video created entirely by social media influencers, it portrays behind-the-scenes events of a video shoot. Trainor performed "Lips Are Movin" on televised shows such as Today, The Voice, and Dancing with the Stars, and included it on the set lists for four of her concert tours: 2015's That Bass Tour and MTrain Tour, 2016's the Untouchable Tour, and 2024's the Timeless Tour. ## Background American songwriter Kevin Kadish met Meghan Trainor in June 2013 at the request of Carla Wallace, the co-owner of Trainor's publishing firm Big Yellow Dog Music. Kadish liked Trainor's voice and booked a writing session with her. They subsequently co-wrote the song "All About That Bass" in November 2013 and pitched it to different record labels, all of which turned it down due to its doo-wop pop production as synth-pop was more popular at the time. L.A. Reid, the chairman of Epic Records, heard it and encouraged Trainor to record it herself. She signed with the label in 2014 and released it as her debut single in June that year. The song reached number 1 in 58 countries and sold 11 million units worldwide. Following the success of "All About That Bass", Trainor's A\&R suggested that she and Kadish write more songs together. Kadish produced eight tracks for her debut major-label studio album Title (2015), and co-wrote seven of them, including "Lips Are Movin". Following the album's initial completion, the two had an additional day to work together and went into the studio. Trainor overheard the instrumental track for "Lips Are Movin" through Kadish's headphone box and insisted they write it that day. Trainor started singing the song's verse after Kadish came up with the line "I know you're lying, your lips are moving", and they finished writing it within eight minutes. In a 2014 interview, he spoke fondly about writing with Trainor: "It's almost like we share a brain musically when we're writing a song. I've never had that with anyone before." ## Composition and lyrics "Lips Are Movin" is 3:01 in length. Kadish produced, engineered, and mixed the song at the Carriage House studio in Nolensville, Tennessee. He plays the acoustic bass, baritone saxophone, drums, guitar, and piano, and David Baron plays the organ. The track was mastered by Dave Kutch at the Mastering Palace in New York. Trainor told The Tennessean that the musical composition of "Lips Are Movin" and "All About That Bass" follows the same formula, which Slant Magazine's Alexa Camp described as "doo-wop throwback, girl-group harmonies, bubblegum pop hooks". "Lips Are Movin" is a retro-tinged doo-wop and pop song, with production that makes use of handclaps, and a post-chorus chant reminiscent of the latter. The lyrics, too, reference it with the line, "I gave you bass/You gave me sweet talk." Trainor assumes a Southern-inflected patois while singing over the song's saxophone bleats. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine described it as Motown bounce. Kadish stated that the lyrics of "Lips Are Movin" were inspired by Trainor's frustrations with her record label. However, reviewers, including The Tennessean's Dave Paulson and MTV News' Christina Garibaldi, deemed it a track about leaving a significant other after being cheated on, an interpretation Kadish is open to. ## Release MTV News reported the song "Title" (2014) would be released as Trainor's second single, in September 2014. Kadish went to New York to meet with Reid and voiced his regret about not having "Lips Are Movin" ready in time for the release of Trainor's debut extended play Title that month, and its potential release as the follow-up single. Reid announced during the meeting that he was going with it as the second single and scrapping "Title", and was quoted by Kadish as saying, "I think this song will do better." On October 14, 2014, "Lips Are Movin" was briefly available to stream on mobile application Shazam, and premiered along with its artwork on MTV News the following day. Epic Records released the song to contemporary hit radio in the United States on October 21, and for digital download in various countries. British radio station BBC Radio 1 added it to rotation on December 26, 2014, and the record label sent it to radio stations in Italy on January 16, 2015. In the UK, "Lips Are Movin" was made available to those who pre-ordered Title, with its digital release as a single being held back until January 18. Sony Music released a CD single exclusively for sale by United States retailer Best Buy on December 30, 2014, and in Germany on February 13, 2015. ## Critical reception "Lips Are Movin" received widespread comparisons to "All About That Bass" from music critics. Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times considered it one of Title's dozen versions of the latter, which he found as cheerful but also as annoying. Writing for Clash, Alice Levine remarked that the songs have the same "factory-produced sass" and theme of false feminism and empowerment, but being done a second time decreased its novelty. The Boston Globe's Marc Hirsh derided "Lips Are Movin" for following the formula of "All About That Bass", writing that Trainor is a plunderer and "steals from herself" with the song. Spin's Dan Weiss criticized the lyrics and compared them to the age-old joke about lawyers being liars. Toronto Star's Ben Rayner wrote that it is "whitewashed into a fairly anodyne mush", and declared that its "hip-hop bump and plush bassline" are "pure cosmetic window dressing". He considered them an attempt to make Trainor's "old-timey aesthetic" feel contemporary. Other reviewers were positive of "Lips Are Movin". Billboard's Carl Wilson complimented the lyrics, saying that they proved Trainor had "more going on than a topical trifle", but concluded that the song was risking "coming off as 'Bass, Part 2". Brian Mansfield of USA Today called "Lips Are Movin" the "better record" of the two. Garibaldi described it as an up-beat and catchy "ladies anthem", and a Billboard critic stated that the "upbeat and sassy" song's similarities with "All About That Bass" would lead to "great things" for it. In a favorable review, Andrew Hampp from the same magazine said that "Lips Are Movin" helped solidify Trainor "as the self-proclaimed queen of her own genre, 'she-wop'". Erlewine declared it the best song on the album and wrote that it would help the listener accept Trainor's "pastiche and performance" skills, and Chicago Tribune's Matt Pais considered it a showcase of Trainor's "versatility, confidence, vulnerability and smartness". ## Chart performance "Lips Are Movin" debuted at number 93 on the US Billboard Hot 100 issued for November 8, 2014. On December 10, 2014, the song moved from number 13 to number 8 and became Trainor's second consecutive top-10 entry, selling 110,000 digital downloads and earning 7.8 million streams. It peaked at number 4 in its eighth week on the chart, receiving 116,000 sales and 8 million streams during the tracking week. This made Trainor the fifth female artist in Billboard Hot 100 chart history to follow her debut number-one single directly with a second top-five. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the single 4× Platinum, which denotes four million units based on sales and track-equivalent on-demand streams. On the Canadian Hot 100, "Lips Are Movin" peaked at number 7 and was certified 2× Platinum by Music Canada. The song debuted at number 89 on the UK Singles Chart issued for December 21, 2014. Following its digital release as a single in the United Kingdom, it rose from number 50 to its peak of number 2 on January 25, 2015. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) certified "Lips Are Movin" Platinum. In Germany, the song reached number 10 and was certified Gold. It peaked at number 3 in Australia and was certified 5× Platinum in 2023. In New Zealand, the track peaked at number 5 and was certified Platinum. Elsewhere, "Lips Are Movin" charted within the top 10 of national record charts – at number 2 in Scotland and Venezuela, number 3 in Czech Republic and Poland, number 4 in Slovakia, number 5 in Ireland, Slovenia, and Spain, number 6 in Austria, and number 10 in the Netherlands and South Africa. The song additionally made the top 30, at number 18 in Hungary and Switzerland, number 22 in Norway, number 23 in Denmark, and number 28 in Sweden. It received a Double Platinum certification in Sweden, Platinum in Mexico and Spain, and Gold in Denmark and Italy. ## Music video ### Background and concept Philip Andelman directed the music video for "Lips Are Movin", which was filmed in Los Angeles, California. It premiered on Trainor's Vevo account on November 19, 2014. Information technology corporation Hewlett-Packard (HP) commissioned the video, which features appearances by social media influencers—actors, dancers and set designers with large social media followings. It is the first-ever music video to be created solely by Vine, Instagram and YouTube stars. Trainor wanted to create something as "big and fun" as the music video for "All About That Bass", and did not want the video to just feature her yelling at a male love interest. Hewlett-Packard and ad agency 180LA had been contacting record labels, wanting to help create a music video as part of the promotional campaign for the former's newly launched Pavilion x360 laptop, when they thought of Trainor. A creative director for 180LA told Adweek that they picked Trainor as her music would suit a "fun, high-energy campaign" and she had the potential to inspire the influencers' followers. HP and Trainor picked out the influencers, which include American YouTuber Liza Koshy, French dancers Les Twins, and American dancer Chachi Gonzales. Trainor described the concept of the video in an interview with MTV News: "Here's me being sassy and other people dancing with me and having just a good time and trying to get through this feeling of, Ugh he's cheating on me again". She said she was excited about it and concluded "it still feels very 'Meghan Trainor,' which is amazing\!". The video depicts behind-the-scenes events of a music video shoot. The x360 laptop appears frequently in the music video as a product placement, beginning with its use as a digital clapperboard in the opening scene. ### Synopsis In the music video, Trainor, in a black leather jacket, sings in front of a pastel blue backdrop. She performs choreography with the influencers in subsequent scenes, on vibrant studio sets of bright colors. The meta concept of the visuals also depicts Trainor getting her makeup done and choosing wardrobe. Lips are used as a motif throughout the video; they appear as close-ups of Trainor's mouth, lip-shaped earrings and sunglasses, and as a large drawing in the backdrop, the latter of which Yahoo\! Music writer Lyndsey Parker compared to those in a poster for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Trainor is later seen lying on a lip-shaped sofa. One of Trainor's outfits include a bubblegum-colored dress with two cat faces on it, which Mike Pell of MTV UK compared to the top Katy Perry wore at the 2014 MTV Europe Music Awards. ### Reception The music video's release reportedly boosted Trainor's social media presence, including an 11% surge in Twitter followers, 16% on Facebook, 41.3% on Instagram, and an almost 100% increase on Vine. Hampp said that in being the first-ever music video created entirely by social media influencers, its production was a "historic milestone in the realm of YouTube creators". James Cowan of Canadian Business believed that some could see Hewlett-Packard's involvement as a dull brand trying to appear modish by attaching itself to influencers, but a more enthusiastic viewer may call it "arts patronage for the 21st century", and noted that the sponsorship is so limited that no one would notice it without searching. Pell called it a thematic continuation of the "All About That Bass" video, due to the bright and ebullient sets featured in both clips. Fuse's Hilary Hughes wrote that the "Lips Are Movin" music video offered a bolder look for Trainor, which constituted a style shift from the latter and "definitely made a statement", but retained its "cheekiness and big-eyed adorable vibes". Parker wrote that Trainor's cat outfit was a "fashion statement" that was bound to get attention, and remarked that the excessive use of lips as a motif could be seen as Trainor's informal campaign for a M.A.C. Viva Glam endorsement deal. ## Live performances Trainor performed "Lips Are Movin" live on NBC's Today on November 5, 2014, where she gave an interview and received a plaque. On November 27, she performed the song at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on a GoldieBlox float. Trainor performed it on the finale of The Voice's seventh season on December 16. She performed a medley of "Lips Are Movin" and "All About That Bass" on the season 19 finale of America's Dancing with the Stars. Trainor performed an acoustic version of the former song on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on January 15, 2015, during which she played the guitar. She performed it during Today's 2015 Toyota Concert Series as well as their 2016 Citi Concert Series. A live rendition of "Lips Are Movin" appeared on BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge 2015. Trainor included the song in her set list for the Jingle Ball Tour 2014, the 2015 Summertime Ball, her That Bass and MTrain Tours, the Untouchable Tour (2016), Capital's Summertime Ball 2024, and the Timeless Tour (2024). She performed it while headlining the Philadelphia Welcome America Festival as part of the 2019 Fourth of July celebrations. ## Credits and personnel Credits adapted from the liner notes of Title - Location - Recorded, engineered, and mixed at The Carriage House, Nolensville, Tennessee - Mastered at The Mastering Palace (New York) - Personnel - Kevin Kadish – producer, songwriter, engineer, acoustic bass, baritone saxophone, drums, guitar, mixing, piano - Meghan Trainor – songwriter - David Baron – organ - Dave Kutch – mastering ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ## Certifications ## Release history ## See also - List of Billboard Hot 100 top 10 singles in 2014

North Carolina-class battleship

US Navy fast battleship class (1937–1947)

The North Carolina class''' were a pair of fast battleships, North Carolina and Washington, built for the United States Navy in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In planning a new battleship class in the 1930s, the US Navy was heavily constrained by international treaty limitations, which included a requirement that all new capital ships have a standard displacement of under 35,000 LT (35,600 t). This restriction meant that the navy could not construct a ship with the firepower, armor, and speed that they desired, and the balancing uncertainty that resulted meant that the navy considered fifty widely varying designs. Eventually, the General Board of the United States Navy declared its preference for a battleship with a speed of 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph), faster than any in US service, with a main battery of nine 14-inch (356 mm)/50 caliber Mark B guns. The board believed that these ships would be balanced enough to effectively take on a multitude of roles. However, the acting Secretary of the Navy authorized a modified version of a different design, which in its original form had been rejected by the General Board. This called for a 27-knot (50 km/h; 31 mph) ship with twelve 14-inch guns in quadruple turrets and protection against guns of the same caliber. In a major departure from traditional American design practices, this design prioritized firepower at the cost of speed and protection. After construction had begun, the United States invoked a so-called "escalator clause" in the international treaty to increase the class' main armament to nine 16-inch (406 mm)/45 caliber Mark 6 guns. Both North Carolina and Washington saw extensive service during the Second World War in a variety of roles, primarily in the Pacific Theater where they escorted fast carrier task forces, such as during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and conducted shore bombardments. Washington also participated in a surface engagement, the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, where its radar-directed main batteries fatally damaged the Japanese battleship Kirishima. Both battleships were damaged during the war, with North Carolina taking a torpedo hit in 1942 and Washington colliding with Indiana in 1944. After the end of the war, both ships remained in commission for a brief time before being laid up in reserve. In the early 1960s, North Carolina was sold to the state of North Carolina as a museum ship, and Washington was broken up for scrap. ## Background After the end of the First World War, several navies continued and expanded naval construction programs that they had started during the conflict. The United States' 1916 program called for six Lexington-class battlecruisers and five South Dakota-class battleships; in December 1918, the administration of President Woodrow Wilson called for building an additional ten battleships and six battlecruisers. The 1919–1920 General Board proposals planned for slightly smaller, but still significant, acquisitions beyond the 1916 plan: two battleships and a battlecruiser for the fiscal year 1921, and three battleships, a battlecruiser, four aircraft carriers and thirty destroyers between the fiscal years 1922 and 1924. The United Kingdom was in the final stages of ordering eight capital ships (the G3 battlecruisers, with the first's keel laying in 1921, and N3-class battleships, to be laid down beginning in 1922). Imperial Japan was, by 1920, attempting to build up to an 8-8 standard of eight battleships and eight battlecruisers or cruisers with the Nagato, Tosa, Amagi, Kii and Number 13 classes. Two ships from these designs were to be laid down per year until 1928. With the staggering costs associated with such programs, the United States' Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes invited delegations from the major maritime powers—France, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom—to come together in Washington, D.C. to discuss, and hopefully end, the naval arms race. The subsequent Washington Naval Conference resulted in the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. Along with many other provisions, it limited all future battleships to a standard displacement of 35,000 long tons (36,000 t) and a maximum gun caliber of 16 inches. It also decreed that the five countries could not construct another capital ship for ten years and could not replace any ship that survived the treaty until it was at least twenty years old. The 1936 Second London Naval Treaty kept many of the Washington treaty's requirements but restricted gun size on new warships to 14 inches. The treaties heavily influenced the design of the North Carolina class, as can be attested to in the long quest to find a ship that incorporated everything the US Navy considered necessary while remaining under 35,000 long tons. ## Design ### Early With the end of the capital ship construction "holiday" approaching, the General Board began preparations for a new class of battleships in May–July 1935, and three design studies were submitted to them. "A" would be 32,150 long tons (32,666 t) armed with nine 14-inch (356 mm) guns in triple turrets, all forward of the bridge; capable of 30 knots; and armored against 14-inch shells. "B" and "C" would both be over 36,000 long tons (37,000 t), able to reach 30.5 kn (56.5 km/h; 35.1 mph), and armored against 14-inch shells. The major difference between the two was the planned main battery, as "B" had twelve 14-inch guns in triple turrets, while "C" had eight 16-inch/45-caliber guns in dual turrets. "A" was the only one to remain within the 35,000-ton displacement limit set in the Washington Naval Treaty and reaffirmed in the Second London Naval Treaty. When the Bureau of Ordnance introduced a "super-heavy" 16-inch shell, the ships were redesigned in an attempt to provide protection against it, but this introduced severe weight problems; two of the designs were nearly 5,000 long tons (5,100 t) over the treaty limit. Although these original three studies were all "fast" battleships, the General Board was not committed to the higher maximum speeds. It posed questions to the Naval War College, asking for their opinion as to whether the new class should be a "conventional" 23-knot (43 km/h; 26 mph) ship with an eight-nine, 16-inch main battery, or rather one akin to "A", "B" or "C". Five more design studies were produced in late September 1935, which had characteristics of 23–30.5 knots, eight or nine 14- or 16-inch guns, and a standard displacement between 31,500 and 40,500 long tons (32,000 and 41,100 t). Designs "D" and "E" were attempts at fast battleships with 16-inch guns and protections against the same, but their displacement was greater than the Washington Naval Treaty allowed. Design "F" was a radical attempt at a hybrid battleship-carrier, with three catapults mounted fore and eight 14-inch guns aft. It was reportedly favored by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but as aircraft launched from catapults were necessarily inferior to most carrier- or land-based aircraft because of the floats used to land, nothing came of the design. Designs "G" and "H" were slower 23-knot ships with nine 14-inch guns; in particular, "H" was thought to be a very well balanced design by the Preliminary Design section of the Bureau of Construction and Repair. However, the General Board finally decided to use faster ships, which "G" and "H" were not. These studies demonstrated the difficulty the designers faced with a displacement of 35,000 tons. They could choose a faster ship, able to steam at 30 knots, but that would force them to mount a lighter armament and armor than contemporary foreign battleships. Alternatively, they could choose a lower maximum speed and mount heavier guns, but fitting in adequate protection against newer 16-inch guns would be extremely difficult. The Preliminary Design section drew up five more studies in October, based upon "A" with additional armor or a scaled-down "B"; all used 14-inch guns and called for at least 30 knots. Two called for four turrets, but they would be too heavy and mount less armor. Another, "K," would have a 15-inch (380 mm) belt and 5.25-inch (133 mm) deck, giving it a 19,000–30,000 yd (9.4–14.8 nmi; 17–27 km) immune zone against the United States' super-heavy 14-inch shell. While "K" was liked by the naval constructors, its designed standard displacement of 35,000 tons left little room for error, modifications, or improvements. The final two designs, "L" and "M," would use quadruple turrets to save weight (similar to the French Dunkerque) while still mounting 12 guns. Many officers in the United States Navy supported the construction of three or four fast battleships for carrier escorts and to counter Japan's Kongō class. These included the acting Secretary of the Navy and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral William Standley, the president of the Naval War College Admiral William S. Pye, a small majority (9–7) of senior officers at sea, and five of six line officers engaged in strategic planning as part of the War Plans Division, although at least one officer believed that an aerial attack would also be capable of sinking the Kongōs. With the above recommendations, the General Board selected "K" to undergo further development. ### Final At least 35 different final designs were proposed. All numbered with Roman numerals ("I" through "XVI-D"), the first five were completed on 15 November 1935. They were the first to employ so-called "paper" weight reductions: not counting certain weights towards the ship's 35,000 long ton treaty limit that were not specifically part of the definition of standard displacement. In this case, even though there was designed storage room for 100 shells per main battery gun and an extra 100 rounds, the weight of the rounds did not figure toward the treaty-mandated limit. These final designs varied greatly in everything but their standard displacements and speeds. Just one was over the treaty displacement limit; every other design called for 35,000 long tons. Only five planned for a top speed of under 27 kn (50 km/h; 31 mph); of those, only one was lower than 26.5 kn (49.1 km/h): "VII", with 22 kn (41 km/h). "VII" returned to a lower speed to obtain more firepower (twelve 14-inch guns in triple turrets) and protection; as such, the design called for only 50,000 shp (37,000 kW) and a length of only 640 ft (200 m). Most other plans called for 710 ft (220 m) or 725 ft (221 m), although a few had lengths between 660 ft (200 m) and 690 ft (210 m). Several different gun mountings were examined, including eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve 14-inch guns; eight 14-inch guns in two quadruple turrets, and even one design with two quadruple 16-inch guns. One specific design, "XVI," was a 27-knot (50 km/h), 714 ft-long (218 m) ship with twelve 14-inch guns, a 11.2-inch (284.5 mm) belt, and a deck 5.1 to 5.6-inches (129.5 to 142.2 mm) thick. Produced on 20 August 1936, the Bureau of Ordnance found many problems in it. For example, model tests showed that at high speeds, waves generated by the hull would leave certain lower parts of the ship uncovered by water or adequate armor, including around the explosive magazines, and the Bureau believed that hits around this part of the hull were easily possible when fighting at ranges between 20,000 and 30,000 yd (9.9 and 14.8 nmi; 18 and 27 km). Other problems included the design's defense against aircraft-dropped bombs, as the Bureau thought the formula used to calculate its effectiveness was not realistic, and the tapering of a fore bulkhead below the waterline could worsen underwater shell hits because the mostly unarmored bow could easily be penetrated. The proposed solutions for these issues were all impractical: added patches of armor around the magazines could neutralize the effectiveness of the ship's torpedo-defense system, and deepening the belt near the bow and stern would put the ships over the 35,000 long ton limit. The General Board detested this design, saying it was "not ... a true battleship" due to its speed and armor problems. To address these problems, a final set of designs was presented by the Preliminary Design section in October 1936. Designated "XVI-B" through "XVI-D," they were all modifications of the "XVI" plan. These added an extra 11 feet (3.4 m) of length to "XVI" for greater speed, but the resulting weight increase meant that only eleven 14-inch guns could be mounted with a thin 10.1-inch (260 mm) belt. Another gun could be traded for a 13.5-inch (342.9 mm) belt, and yet another could be swapped for more speed and an extra tenth of an inch of belt armor; this became design "XVI-C". The General Board liked "XVI-C" very much, seeing in it a ship that had enough protection to fight—and survive—in a battle line formed with the US' older battleships while also having enough speed to operate in a detached wing with aircraft carrier or cruiser commerce raiding groups. However, one member of the Board, Admiral Joseph Reeves—one of the principal developers of the United States' aircraft carrier strategy—disliked "XVI-C" because he believed that it was not fast enough to work with the 33-knot (61 km/h; 38 mph) fast carriers, and it was not powerful enough to justify its cost. Instead, he advocated a development of the previously rejected "XVI", adding additional underwater protection and patches of armor within the ship to make the magazines immune to above- and below-water shell hits from 19,000 yd (9.4 nmi; 17 km) and beyond. The immune zone's outer limit was increased from 28,200 yd (13.9 nmi; 25.8 km) to 30,000 yd (15 nmi; 27 km). After further revisions, Reeves went to Standley, the Chief of Naval Operations, who approved "XVI" in its newly modified form over the hopes of the General Board, who still thought that "XVI-C" should be built. Standley's only addition to the characteristics was to be able to switch from quadruple 14-inch to triple 16 in (406 mm) turrets if the "escalator clause" in the Second London Naval Treaty was invoked. With these parameters now set, "XVI" would become the basis of the North Carolina class' as-built design despite additional back and forth over the design's final particulars. These included an increase in armor; something allowed by the finding of more on-paper weight savings; the armor's slope was increased from 10° to 13°, and eventually settled at 15°; a months-long debate on the propulsion machinery's layout was finally concluded, and other minor changes. ### The "escalator clause" Although the Second London Naval Treaty stipulated that warship guns could be no larger than 14 inches, a so-called "escalator clause" was included at the urging of American negotiators in case any country that had signed the Washington Naval Treaty refused to adhere to this new limit. The provision allowed signatory countries of the Second London Treaty—France, the United Kingdom and the United States—to raise the limit from 14 to 16 inches if Japan or Italy still refused to sign after 1 April 1937. When figuring potential configurations for the North Carolinas, designers focused most of their planning on 14-inch weaponry; Standley's requirement meant that a switch from 14- to 16-inch, even after the ships' keels had been laid, was possible. Japan formally rejected the 14-inch limit on 27 March 1937, meaning that the "escalator clause" could be invoked. There were hurdles that still needed to be overcome, though: Roosevelt was under heavy political pressure and, as a result, was reluctant to allow the 16-inch gun. > I am not willing that the United States be the first naval power to adopt the 16 in. gun. ... Because of the international importance of the United States not being the first to change the principles laid down in the Washington and London Treaties, it seems to me that the plans for the two new battleships should contemplate the ... 14-inch gun. Admiral Reeves also came out strongly in favor of the larger weapon. In a two-page letter to Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson and indirectly to Roosevelt, Reeves argued that the 16-inch gun's significantly greater armor penetration was of paramount importance, drawing examples from the First World War's Battle of Jutland, where some battleships were able to survive ten or twenty hits from large guns, but other battlecruisers were blown up in three to seven hits because the shells were able to cut through the armor protecting magazines and turrets. Reeves also argued that the larger gun would favor the "indirect method" of shooting then being developed, where airplanes would be used to relay targeting information to allied battleships so that they could bombard targets that were out of their sight or over the horizon, because new battleships being built by foreign powers would have more armor. Reeves believed that if the 14-inch gun was adopted, it would not be able to penetrate this larger amount of protection, whereas the 16-inch would be able to break through. In a final vain attempt, Roosevelt's Secretary of State Cordell Hull sent a telegram on 4 June to the Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew instructing him that the United States would still accept a cap of 14-inch guns if he could get Japan to as well. The Japanese replied that they could not accept this unless the number of battleships was also limited; they wanted the United States and the United Kingdom to agree to having an equal number of battleships with Japan, but this was a condition that the two countries refused to accept. On 24 June, the two North Carolinas were ordered with the 14-inch weapons, but on 10 July, Roosevelt directed that they be armed with triple 16-inch instead. ## Specifications ### General characteristics The North Carolina was 713 feet 5.25 inches (217.456 m) long at the waterline and 728 feet 8.625 inches (222.113 m) long overall. The maximum beam was 108 feet 3.875 inches (33.017 m) while waterline beam was 104 feet 6 inches (31.85 m) due to the inclination of the armor belt. In 1942, the standard displacement was 36,600 long tons (37,200 t) while full load displacement was 44,800 long tons (45,500 t), while maximum draft was 35 feet 6 inches (10.82 m). At design combat displacement of 42,329 long tons (43,008 t), the mean draft was 31 feet 7.313 inches (9.635 m) and (GM) metacentric height was 8.31 feet (2.53 m). As designed, the crew complement was 1,880 with 108 officers and 1,772 enlisted. By 1945, the considerable increase in anti-aircraft armament and their crew accommodations had increased full load displacement to 46,700 long tons (47,400 t), while crew complement increased to 2,339 with 144 officers and 2,195 enlisted. After the end of World War II, the crew complement was reduced to 1,774. The North Carolina class hull feature a bulbous bow and had an unusual stern design for the time by placing the two inboard propulsion shafts in skegs. This was theorized to improve flow conditions to the propellers. Initial model basin testing for various stern configurations suggested that the skeg arrangement could reduce resistance, although later testing during the design process of the Montana-class battleship would indicate an increase in drag. The skegs improved the structural strength of the stern by acting as girders and also provided structural continuity for the torpedo bulkheads. However, the skegs also contributed to severe vibration problems with the class that required extensive testing and modifications to mitigate. The problem was particularly acute near the aft main battery director, which required additional reinforcing braces due to the vibrations. Nevertheless, skegs would be improved and incorporated in the designs of all subsequent American battleships, with vibration problems largely eliminated on the Iowa class battleships. ### Armament North Carolina and Washington were principally armed with nine 16-inch (406 mm)/45 caliber (cal) Mark 6 guns and twenty 5-inch (127 mm)/38 cal Mark 12 guns. Their lighter armament consisted of varying numbers of 1.1-inch (28 mm)/75 caliber, .50 caliber machine guns, Bofors 40 mm and Oerlikon 20 mm. #### Main battery Mounted on both the North Carolina class and the follow-up South Dakota class, the nine 16 in/45 were improved versions of the guns mounted on the Colorado-class battleships, hence the designation of "Mark 6". A major alteration from the older guns was the Mark 6's ability to fire a new 2,700-pound (1,200-kilogram) armor-piercing (AP) shell developed by the Bureau of Ordnance. At full charge with a brand-new gun, the heavy shell would be expelled at a muzzle velocity of 2,300 ft/s (700 m/s). At a reduced charge, the same shell would be fired at 1,800 ft/s (550 m/s). Barrel life—the approximate number of rounds a gun could fire before needing to be relined or replaced—was 395 shells when using AP, although if only practice shells were used this figure was significantly higher: 2,860. Turning at 4 degrees a second, each turret could train to 150 degrees on either side of the ship. The guns could be elevated to a maximum inclination of 45 degrees; turrets one and three could depress to −2 degrees, but due to its superfiring position, the guns on turret two could only depress to 0 degrees. Each gun was 736 in (18,700 mm) long overall; its bore and rifling length were 715.2-inch (18,170 mm) and 616.9-inch (15,670 mm), respectively. Maximum range with the heavy AP shell was obtained at an inclination of 45 degrees: 36,900 yd (33,700 m). At the same elevation a lighter 1,900-pound (860-kilogram) high capacity (HC) shell would travel 40,180 yards (20 nautical miles; 37 kilometres). The guns weighed 85.85 long tons (192,300 lb; 87,230 kg) not including the breech; the turrets weighed 1,403–1,437 long tons (3,143,000–3,219,000 lb; 1,426,000–1,460,000 kg). When firing the same shell, the 16-inch/45 Mark 6 had a slight advantage over the 16-inch/50 Mark 7 when hitting deck armor—a shell from a 45 cal gun would be slower, meaning that it would have a steeper trajectory as it descended. At 36,000 yards (18 nautical miles; 33 kilometres), a shell from a 45 cal would strike a ship at an angle of 47.5 degrees, as opposed to 38 degrees with the 50 cal. #### Secondary battery The North Carolinas carried ten Mark 28 Mod 0 enclosed base ring mounts, each supporting twin 5-inch/38-caliber Mark 12 guns Originally designed to be mounted on destroyers built in the 1930s, these guns were so successful that they were added to a myriad of American ships during the Second World War, including every major ship type and many smaller warships constructed between 1934 and 1945. They were considered to be "highly reliable, robust and accurate" by the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance. The 5-inch/38 functioned as a dual purpose gun. However, this did not mean that it possessed inferior anti-air abilities; as established during 1941 gunnery tests conducted on board North Carolina, the gun possessed the ability to consistently shoot down aircraft flying at 12,000–13,000 feet (2.3–2.5 miles; 3.7–4.0 kilometres), which was twice as far as the effective range of the earlier single purpose 5-inch/25 anti-air gun. Each 5-inch/38 weighed almost 4,000 lb (1,800 kg) without the breech. The entire mount weighed 156,295 pounds (70,894 kilograms). It was 223.8 in (5,680 mm) long overall, had a bore length of 190 in (4,800 mm), and had a rifling length of 157.2 in (3,990 mm). The gun could fire shells at about 2,500–2,600 ft/s (760–790 m/s); about 4,600 could be fired before the barrel needed to be replaced. Minimum and maximum elevations were −15 and 85 degrees, respectively. The guns' elevation could be raised or lowered at about 15 degrees per second. Loading was possible at any elevation. The mounts closest to the bow and stern could aim from −150 to 150 degrees; the others were restricted to −80 to 80 degrees. They could be turned at about 25 degrees per second. #### Smaller weaponry The remaining weaponry on board the two North Carolinas was composed of differing numbers of 1.1"/75 caliber guns, .50 caliber machine guns, Bofors 40 mm and Oerlikon 20 mm cannons. Although the ships were originally designed to carry only four quadruple 1.1 in and twelve .50 caliber, this was greatly increased and upgraded during the war. On both ships, two more quadruple sets of 1.1 in guns were added in place of two searchlights amidships. After it was torpedoed in 1942, North Carolina had these removed and ten quadruple sets of 40 mm guns added. Fourteen were present by June 1943, while a fifteenth mount was added on top of the third main turret that November. Washington retained its six 1.1 in quads until the middle of 1943, when ten quad 40 mm guns replaced them. By August, it had fifteen. The two ships carried these through to the close of the war. The .50 caliber machine guns did not have the range or power needed to combat modern aircraft and were scheduled for replacement by equal numbers of 20 mm guns, but nothing immediately came of the proposal. In fact, both North Carolina and Washington carried 20 mm and .50 caliber guns for most of 1942. In April, North Carolina had, respectively, forty and twelve, while Washington had twenty and twelve. Two months later, the number of 20 mm guns remained the same, but twelve .50 caliber guns had been added. By September, Washington had twenty more 20 mm guns added, for a total of forty, but five were removed—along with all of the .50 caliber guns—shortly thereafter when two quadruple sets of 1.1 in guns were added. In its refit after being torpedoed, North Carolina had an additional six 20 mm guns added and all of its .50 caliber weapons removed. Washington had sixty-four 20 mm weapons by April 1943, prior to one single mount being replaced by a quadruple mount, and North Carolina had fifty-three by March 1944. In April 1945, North Carolina was assigned to have fifty-six 20 mm, while Washington was assigned seventy-five. In August 1945, the ships both had eight twin 20 mm mounts; North Carolina also carried twenty single, while Washington carried one quad and sixty-three single. ### Electronics Both North Carolina and Washington, designed prior to radar, were originally fitted with many fire-control and navigational optical range-finders. The former lasted until 1944, when it was replaced by a Mark 27 microwave radar supplemented by a Mark 3 main armament fire control radar. The range-finders were removed in favor of additional 20 mm guns sometime between the end of 1941 and mid-1942. In addition, the ships were commissioned with two Mark 38 directors and were originally fitted with a CXAM air search, two Mark 3s and three Mark 4 secondary armament. By November 1942, North Carolina had an additional Mark 4 and a SG surface search radar added. The normal battleship configuration was present aboard North Carolina in April 1944, with SK and SG radars (air and surface search, respectively), a backup SG, and Mark 8s to direct its main battery. All of the Mark 4s remained for the secondary battery, and one of the older Mark 3s was still present, possibly as a backup for the Mark 8s. An SK-2 dish replaced the older SK radar and Mark 12s and 22s superseded the Mark 4s in September of that year. Aside from never receiving an SK-2, Washington was the recipient of similar upgrades. Both ships underwent extensive refits near the end or after the war. North Carolina received a secondary air search set (SR) and a SCR-720 zenith search radar on the forward funnel. At the end of the war, it had an SP surface-search, a SK-2 air-search, a Mark 38 main battery fire control system with Mark 13 and 27 radars, a Mark 37 secondary battery fire control system with Mark 12, 22 and 32 radars, and a Mark 57 smaller weaponry fire control system, with a Mark 34 radar. In March 1946, Washington had a SK fore and a SR aft, a SG both fore and aft, and a TDY jammer (which could scramble radar on other ships). ### Propulsion The ships in the North Carolina class were equipped with four General Electric geared turbines and eight Babcock & Wilcox three-drum express type boilers. The ships' powerplant incorporated several recent developments in turbine equipment, including double helical reduction gears and high-pressure steam technology. North Carolina's boilers supplied steam at 575 psi (3,960 kPa) and as hot as 850 °F (454 °C). To meet the design requirement of 27 kn (50 km/h; 31 mph), the engine system was originally designed to supply 115,000 shp (85,755 kW), but the new technologies increased this output to 121,000 shp (90,000 kW). Despite this increase, the maximum speed for the ships did not change, since the modifications to the powerplant were incorporated later in the design process. The turbines that had already been installed could not fully take advantage of the higher pressure and temperature steam, and so the level of efficiency was not as high as it should have been. When going astern, the engines provided 32,000 shp (24,000 kW). The engine system was divided into four engine rooms, all on the centerline. Each room contained a turbine and two boilers, without any division between the boilers and turbines. This was done to limit the risk of capsizing should the ship sustain heavy flooding in the engine rooms. The engine rooms alternated in their layout: the first and third engine rooms were arranged with the turbine on the starboard side and its corresponding boilers on the port, this was reversed in the second and fourth rooms. The forward-most engine room powered the starboard outer shaft, the second turbine drove the outer screw on the port side, the third engine supplied power to the inner starboard propeller, and the fourth turbine drove the port-side inner screw. All four screws had four blades; the two outer propellers were 15 ft 4 in (4.67 m) in diameter and the inner pair were 16 ft 7.5 in (5.067 m) wide. Steering was controlled by a pair of rudders. At the time of their commissioning, the ships had a top speed of 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph), though by 1945, with the addition of other equipment, such as anti-aircraft weaponry, their maximum speed was reduced to 26.8 knots (49.6 km/h; 30.8 mph). The increases in weight also reduced the ships' cruising range. In 1941, the ships could steam for 17,450 nautical miles (32,320 km; 20,080 mi) at a cruising speed of 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph); by 1945, the range at that speed was reduced to 16,320 nmi (30,220 km; 18,780 mi). At 25 knots (46 km/h; 29 mph), the range was considerably lower, at 5,740 nmi (10,630 km; 6,610 mi). Electrical power was supplied by eight generators. Four were turbo-generators designed for naval use; these provided 1,250 kilowatts each. The other four were diesel generators that supplied 850 kilowatts each. Two smaller diesel generators—each provided 200 kilowatts—supplied emergency power should the main system be damaged. Total electrical output was 8,400 kilowatts, not including the emergency generators, at 450 volts on an alternating current. ### Armor The North Carolina class incorporated "all or nothing" armor which weighed 41% of the total displacement; it consisted of an "armored raft" that extended from just forward of the first gun turret to just aft of the rear gun turret. They had a main armored belt of Class A armor that was 12-inch (305 mm) thick amidships, inclined at 15°, and backed by 0.75-inch (19 mm) Special Treatment Steel (STS). This tapered down to 6-inch (152 mm) on the lower edge of the belt. The ships had three armored decks; their main deck was 1.45-inch (37 mm) thick. The second, thickest deck was 3.6-inch (91 mm) of Class B armor laminated on 1.4-inch (36 mm) STS for a total of 5-inch (127 mm). In the outboard sections of the hull the plating was 4.1-inch (104 mm) Class B laminated on 1.4-inch (36 mm) STS. The third and thinnest deck was 0.62-inch (16 mm) thick inboard, and .75-inch (19 mm) outboard. The first deck was designed to cause delay-fuzed projectiles to detonate, while the thicker second deck would protect the ships' internals. The third deck was intended to protect against shell splinters that might have penetrated the second deck; it also acted as the upper support for the torpedo bulkheads. The conning tower was connected to the armored citadel by a 14-inch (356 mm) thick communications tube. Armor thickness for the conning tower itself ranged from 16 inches (406 mm) on both sides to 14.7 inches (373 mm) on the front and rear. The roof was 7 inches (178 mm) thick and the bottom was 3.9 inches (99 mm) thick. The main battery turrets were heavily armored: the turret faces were 16-inch (406 mm) thick, the sides were 9-inch (229 mm) thick, the rear sides were 11.8-inch (300 mm) thick, and the roofs were 7-inch (178 mm) thick. Sixteen–inch-thick armor was the maximum width factories were able to produce at the time of the ships' design; by 1939, however, it was possible to create 18-inch (457 mm)-thick plates. These were not installed because it was estimated that the conversion would delay completion of the ships by 6 to 8 months. The barbettes that held the turrets were also strongly protected. The front portion was 14.7 inches (373 mm), the sides increased to 16 in, and the rear portion reduced to 11.5-inch (292 mm). The 5-inch gun turrets, along with their ammunition magazines, were armored with 1.95-inch (50 mm) STS plates. The side protection system incorporated five compartments divided by torpedo bulkheads and a large anti-torpedo bulge that ran the length of the "armored raft". The outer two compartments, the innermost compartment and the bulge would remain empty, while the third and fourth compartments would be filled with liquid. The system was reduced in depth at either end by the forward and rear gun turrets. In these areas, the fifth compartment was deleted; instead, there was an outer empty compartment and two liquid-filled spaces, backed by another empty compartment. To compensate for the reduced underwater protection system, these sections received additional armor plating, up to 3.75-inch (95 mm) in thickness. The complete system was 18.5 ft (5.64 m) deep and designed to withstand warheads of up to 700 lb (320 kg) of TNT. Underwater protection was rounded out by a triple bottom that was 5.75 ft (2 m) deep. The bottom layer was 3 ft (1 m) thick and was kept filled with fluid, while the upper 2.75-foot (1 m) thick layer was kept empty. The triple bottom was also heavily subdivided to prevent catastrophic flooding should the upper layer be penetrated. ## Service ### Construction Two ships, each to cost about $50 million, were authorized in January 1937. Five shipyards submitted bids to build one of the two planned ships. Three were privately run corporations: Bethlehem Shipbuilding, New York Shipbuilding and Newport News Shipbuilding. The other two, the New York Naval Shipyard and Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, were run by the government. When bids were reviewed, the privately run shipyards' submissions ranged from $46 to 50 million, while their government counterparts came in at $37 million. Newport News was unique among these in refusing any fixed monetary value in favor of a "cost-plus 3+1⁄2%" price, but this led to the rejection of their bid out of hand. The bids from private companies were heavily influenced by the legislation of the New Deal. The Vinson–Trammell Act limited profit from a ship's construction to 10 percent, while the Walsh–Healey Public Contracts Act specified a minimum wage and required working conditions for workers. The latter act greatly affected the ability of the navy to acquire steel, as the text of the law caused friction between executives in the industry, who greatly disliked the forty-hour work week and minimum wage requirements, and their workers—who themselves were embroiled in a separate dispute pitting the union of the skilled workers, the American Federation of Labor, against the union of the unskilled, the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Amid the unrest, the navy ran into difficulties trying to acquire 18 million pounds of steel to build six destroyers and three submarines; many more pounds than this would be needed for the new battleships. The private shipyards, however, had their own labor problems, so much so that one author described the navy's issues as "minimal" compared to their shipbuilding counterparts. This increased the price of the battleships to $60 million each, so the Bureau of Steam Engineering and Bureau of Construction and Repair recommended to their superiors that the $37 million tenders from the two navy yards be accepted. This was confirmed by Roosevelt, as the private shipyards' bids were seen as unjustly inflated. The contracts for North Carolina and Washington—names had been officially chosen on 3 May 1937—were sent to the New York and Philadelphia yards, respectively, on 24 June 1937. Shortly after this announcement, Roosevelt was bombarded with heavy lobbying from citizens and politicians from Camden and the state of New Jersey, in an ultimately futile attempt to have the construction of North Carolina shifted to Camden's New York Shipbuilding; such a contract would keep many men employed in that area. Roosevelt refused, saying that the disparity in price was too great. Instead, the company was awarded two destroyer tenders in December 1937, Dixie and Prairie. Construction of the North Carolina class was slowed by the aforementioned material issues, the changes made to the basic design after this date—namely the substitution of 16-inch for 14-inch guns—and the need to add both length and strength to the slipways already present in the navy yards. Increased use of welding was proposed as a possible way to reduce weight and bolster the structural design, as it could have reduced the ships' structural weight by 10%, but it was used in only about 30% of the ship. The costs associated with welding and an increase in the time of construction made it impractical. ### North Carolina USS North Carolina (BB-55) was laid down on 27 October 1937, the first battleship begun by the United States since the never-completed South Dakota class of the early 1920s. Although North Carolina was launched on 13 June 1940 and commissioned on 9 April 1941, it did not go on active duty because of acute longitudinal vibrations from its propeller shafts. A problem shared with its sister Washington and some other ships like Atlanta, it was only cured after different propellers were tested aboard North Carolina, including four-bladed and cut-down versions of the original three-bladed. This testing required it to be at sea, and the many resulting trips out of New York Harbor to the Atlantic Ocean caused it to be nicknamed "The Showboat". After a shakedown cruise in the Caribbean Sea and participation in war exercises, North Carolina transited the Panama Canal en route to the Pacific War. Joining Task Force (TF) 16, the battleship escorted the aircraft carrier Enterprise during the invasions of Guadalcanal and Tulagi on 7 August 1942, and continued to accompany the carrier when it moved to be southeast of the Solomons. The Battle of the Eastern Solomons began when Japanese carriers were spotted on 24 August; although American planes were able to strike first by sinking the light carrier Ryūjō, a strike group from a different force, formed around the fleet carriers Shōkaku and Zuikaku, attacked TF 16. In an intense eight-minute battle, North Carolina shot down 7–14 aircraft and was relatively undamaged, though there were seven near-misses and one crewman was killed by strafing. Enterprise took three bomb hits. North Carolina then joined the carrier Saratoga's screen, and protected it while support was rendered to American troops fighting on Guadalcanal. Although it dodged one torpedo on 6 September, it was not able to avoid another on the 15th. Out of a six-torpedo salvo from the Japanese submarine I-19, three hit the carrier Wasp, one hit O'Brien, one missed, and one struck North Carolina. A 660 lb (300 kg) warhead hit on the port side 20 ft (6.1 m) below the waterline at a point that was just behind the number one turret. It created a 32 ft × 18 ft (9.8 m × 5.5 m) hole, allowed about 970 long tons (986 t) of water into the ship—which had to be offset with counter-flooding, meaning that another 480 long tons (488 t) entered—killed five men, and wounded twenty. Although North Carolina could steam at 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph) soon after the explosion, it was later forced to slow to 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) to ensure that temporary shoring did not fail. Structural damage beneath the first turret rendered it unable to fire unless in absolute need, and the main search radar failed. As this was the first torpedo to strike a modern American battleship, there was a large amount of interest from various officers and bureaus within the navy in learning more about it. The conclusions were seen as a vindication by some who believed that too much had been sacrificed in the design of the North Carolinas—the torpedo defense system had come close to breaking near one of the most important areas of the ship (a magazine), after all—and the General Board called for the fifth and sixth Iowa-class battleships, Illinois and Kentucky, to have a torpedo bulge added outside their magazines. However, the new Bureau of Ships opposed this on the basis that the system performed as it was supposed to; in any case, no modifications were made. Repaired and refitted at the facilities in Pearl Harbor, North Carolina operated as a carrier escort for Enterprise and Saratoga for the remainder of 1942 and the majority of 1943 while they provided cover for supply and troop movements in the Solomons. In between, it received advanced fire control and radar gear in March, April and September 1943 at Pearl Harbor. In November, North Carolina escorted Enterprise while the carrier launched strikes upon Makin, Tarawa and Abemama. On 1–8 December it bombarded Nauru before returning to carrier screening; it accompanied Bunker Hill while that carrier launched attacks on Kavieng and New Ireland. Joining Task Force 58 in January 1944, North Carolina escorted aircraft carriers as the flagship of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee, Commander, Battleships, Pacific Fleet (ComBatPac) for much of the year, providing support for airborne strikes on Kwajalein, Namur, Truk (twice), Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Palau, Woleai, and Hollandia in January–April. Also in April, North Carolina destroyed defensive installations on Ponape before setting course for Pearl Harbor for repairs to a damaged rudder. With repairs completed, the battleship joined with Enterprise on 6 June for assaults within the Marianas; as part of these, North Carolina used its main battery to bombard Saipan and Tanapag. In late June, North Carolina was one of the American ships which took part in the so-called "Marianas Turkey Shoot", where a majority of attacking Japanese aircraft were shot down out of the air at little cost to the American defenders. Problems with its propeller shafts then caused the battleship to sail to the Puget Sound Navy Yard to receive an overhaul. It returned to active duty in November and to its carrier escort tasks in time to be hit by a typhoon. North Carolina protected carriers while they provided air cover for invasion fleets and launched attacks on Leyte, Luzon, and the Visayas. Surviving another typhoon, one which sank three destroyers, North Carolina continued escort duty when naval aircraft struck Formosa, Indo-China, China, the Ryukyus and Honshu in January and February 1945. During the invasion of Iwo Jima, the battleship provided bombardment support for troops ashore. During the assault on Okinawa, North Carolina screened carriers and bombarded targets ashore. Although it was able to shoot down three kamikazes on 6 April, it was also struck by a 5-inch (127 mm) shell during that time in a friendly fire incident; three were killed and forty-four injured. The battleship shot down a plane on the 7th and two on the 17th. After receiving another overhaul from 9 May to 28 June, this one in the naval yard at Pearl Harbor, North Carolina operated as both a carrier escort and shore bombardier for the remainder of the war. Of note was a 17 July bombardment of the industrial area in Hitachi, Ibaraki in company with fellow battleships Alabama, Missouri, Wisconsin and HMS King George V, along with smaller warships. In August, members of North Carolina's crew and Marine contingent were sent ashore to assist in occupying Japan. After the official surrender, these men were brought back aboard and the battleship sailed to Okinawa. As part of Operation "Magic Carpet", soldiers were embarked to be returned to the United States. Passing through the locks of Panama Canal on 8 October, it weighed anchor in Boston on the 17th. After an overhaul in the New York Naval Yard, it participated in exercises off New England before beginning a midshipman training cruise in the Caribbean. North Carolina was decommissioned in Bayonne, New Jersey on 27 June 1947; it remained in the reserve fleet in until 1 June 1960, when it was struck from the Naval Vessel Register. Instead of the scrapping that faced most of the United States' battleships, North Carolina was sold to the state of North Carolina for $250,000 on 8 August 1961 to be a museum ship. It was dedicated in Wilmington on 29 April 1962 as a memorial to the citizens of the state who died in the Second World War. Listed on the United States' National Register of Historic Places and designated as a National Historic Landmark on 1 January 1986, it remains there today, maintained by the USS North Carolina Battleship Commission. ### Washington USS Washington (BB-56) was laid down on 14 June 1938, launched on 1 June 1940 and commissioned on 15 May 1941 at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Although commissioned, its engine had not yet been run at full power—like its sister, Washington had major problems with longitudinal vibrations, which were only tempered after many tests conducted aboard North Carolina. The fixes made it possible to run builder's trials, which Washington did on 3 August 1941; loaded at about 44,400 long tons (45,100 t), the propulsion plant was run up to 123,850 shp (92,350 kW), and repeated the performance again in February 1942, achieving 127,100 and 120,000 shp (94,800 and 89,500 kW). In early 1942 Rear Admiral John W. Wilcox chose Washington as the flagship of Task Force 39. On 26 March 1942, Washington, along with Wasp, Wichita, Tuscaloosa and various smaller ships, sailed to bolster the British Home Fleet. During the voyage, Wilcox fell into the ocean; he was seen soon after by the destroyer Wilson, face down in the water, but due to rough seas they were unable to retrieve the body. It is not known what exactly happened; he could have simply been caught by a wave and washed overboard, but there has been speculation that he suffered a heart attack. The force reached the main anchorage of the Home Fleet, Scapa Flow, on 4 April. Washington and the other ships of TF 39 participated in exercises with the Home Fleet until late April. Along with certain British units, the task force departed the British Isles as TF 99. They escorted some of the Arctic convoys which were carrying vital cargo to the Soviet Union. While carrying out this duty, an accompanying British battleship, HMS King George V, accidentally rammed a destroyer, cutting it in two. Directly behind King George V, Washington passed through the same stretch of sea and received damage from exploding depth charges. Though damage to the hull was minimal—limited to only one leaking fuel tank—many devices on board the ship were damaged, including main battery range finders, circuit breakers, three fire-control and the search radars. The American ships then put in at an Icelandic port, Hvalfjörður, until 15 May; they returned to Scapa Flow on 3 June. On 4 June, Washington hosted the commander of US naval forces in Europe, Admiral Harold Rainsford Stark, who set up a temporary headquarters on the ship for the next few days. On 7 June, King George VI of the United Kingdom inspected the battleship. Washington left the North Sea bound for the United States on 14 July with an escort of four destroyers; upon arrival at the New York Naval Yard on the 23rd, it was given a full overhaul which took a month to be completed. It set sail for the Panama Canal and the Pacific Ocean on 23 August and reached its destination, Tonga Island, on 14 September, where it became the flagship of Admiral Willis "Ching" Lee. Over the coming months, Washington would be focused upon the safe arrival of supply convoys to the men fighting on Guadalcanal. On 13 November, three formations of Japanese ships were discovered on course for Guadalcanal, one of them aiming to bombard Henderson Field while night gave them protection from aircraft. The first Japanese bombardment force was driven back by an American cruiser-destroyer force. On 14 November, the Japanese organized another sortie to neutralize the airfield. Washington, South Dakota, and four destroyers were sent to intercept the Japanese force that night. The Japanese, composed of the fast battleship Kirishima, two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and nine destroyers, initially sank three US destroyers and inflicted significant topside damage to South Dakota. However, Washington remained undetected and at midnight fired on Kirishima from 5,800 yd (5 km; 3 nmi), point blank range for Washington's 16-inch/45-caliber guns. Washington fired seventy-five 16-inch and one hundred and seven 5-inch rounds during the melee, scoring 20 main and seventeen secondary battery hits, knocking out Kirishimas steering and main battery and causing uncontrollable progressive flooding. Kirishima capsized at 03:25 on the morning of 15 November 1942, with 212 crewmen lost. Radar-directed fire from Washington's secondary battery also damaged destroyer Ayanami so severely it had to be scuttled. Soon after the battle, the Japanese began evacuating Guadalcanal. Until April 1943, Washington stayed near its base in New Caledonia, providing protection for convoys and battle groups that were supporting the Solomons campaign. Returning to Pearl Harbor, it practiced for battle and underwent an overhaul before returning to the combat zone in late July. From August to the end of October, Washington operated out of Efate. It then joined with four battleships and six destroyers as Task Group (TG) 53.2 for exercises; Enterprise, Essex and Independence also participated. TG 52.2 then voyaged to the Gilbert Islands to add additional firepower to the strikes currently hitting them. Departing in late November, Washington first steamed to Makin to provide protection for ships there, then Ocean Island to prepare to bombard Nauru with its sister North Carolina, all four South Dakota-class battleships, and the carriers Bunker Hill and Monterey. All of the capital ships struck before dawn on 8 December; the aircraft carriers struck again soon after. The ships then sailed back to Efate, arriving on 12 December. On Christmas, Washington, North Carolina, and four destroyers left Efate for gunnery practice. By late January, it was made part of TG 50.1 to escort the fast carriers in that group as they launched strikes on Taroa and Kwajalein. It also moved in to hit Kwajalein with its guns on 30 January. Before dawn on 1 February, with the sky still shrouded in darkness, Washington collided with Indiana when the latter left formation to fuel four destroyers. Indiana had radioed that it was going to make a turn to port out of the formation, but soon after starting the turn, its captain ordered a reversal, back to starboard. About seven minutes later, it came into view of lookouts aboard Washington at a range of 1,000 yards (3,000 ft; 914 m). Although crews on both ships frantically tried to avoid the other, it was to no avail; Washington gave Indiana a glancing blow, scraping down a large aft portion of the ship's starboard side. Washington's fore end was severely damaged, with about 60 ft (18 m) of its bow hanging down and into the water. Ten men, six from Washington, were killed or listed as missing. After temporary reinforcements to the damaged section, it was forced to sail to Pearl Harbor to be fitted with a false bow to make possible a voyage to Puget Sound. Once there, it received a full overhaul, along with a new bow; this work lasted from March until April. Washington did not enter the war zone again until late May. Washington next participated in the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign, serving again as a carrier escort ship, though it was detached on the 13th to fire on Japanese positions on Saipan and Tinian. With the sortie of a majority of the remaining ships in the Imperial Japanese Navy spotted by American submarines, Washington, along with six other battleships, four heavy cruisers and fourteen destroyers covered the aircraft carriers of TF 58; on the 19th, with the attack of many aircraft, the Battle of the Philippine Sea began. Able to beat off the attacks, Washington refueled and continued escorting carriers until it formed a new task group with three battleships and escorts. After a lengthy stop at Enewetak Atoll, it supported troops assaulting Peleliu and Angaur before returning to screening duties. This duty lasted from 10 October to 17 February 1945. The battleship bombarded Iwo Jima from 19–22 February in support of the invasion there before escorting carriers which sent aircraft raids against Tokyo and targets on the island of Kyūshū. On 24 March and 19 April, Washington bombarded Okinawa; it then departed for Puget Sound to receive a refit, having been in action for the majority of the time since its refit in March–April 1944. This lasted through V-J Day and the subsequent formal ceremony aboard Missouri, so Washington received orders to voyage to Philadelphia, where it arrived on 17 October. Here it was modified to have an additional 145 bunks so it could participate in Operation Magic Carpet. Sailing to Southampton with a reduced crew of 84 officers and 835 crew, it brought 185 army officers and 1,479 enlisted men back to the United States; this was the only voyage it would make in support of the operation. The battleship was placed into reserve at Bayonne, New Jersey on 27 June 1947, after only a little more than six years of service. Washington was never reactivated. Struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 June 1960—exactly 21 years to the day since its launch—she was sold on 24 May 1961 to be scrapped. ## Post-war alteration proposals North Carolina and Washington remained in active duty in the years immediately after the war, possibly because their crew accommodations were more comfortable and less cramped than the four South Dakotas. The ships received alterations during this period; the Ship Characteristics Board (SCB) directed in June 1946 that four of the quadruple-mounted 40 mm guns be removed, though only two were actually taken off each ship. The 20 mm weapons were also reduced at some point so that both ships were decommissioned with sixteen twin mounts. North Carolina and Washington were decommissioned on 27 June 1947 and subsequently moved to the reserve fleet. In May 1954, SCB created a class improvement project for the North Carolinas which included twenty-four 3-inch/50 guns directed by six Mark 56s. A month later, the SCB chairman voiced his belief that the North Carolinas and South Dakotas would be excellent additions to task forces—if they could be faster. The Bureau of Ships then considered and discarded designs that would move these ships at 31 kn (57 km/h; 36 mph), four knots faster than their current attainable speed. In order for a North Carolina to attain 31 knots, 240,000 shp (180,000 kW) would be required. This, in turn, would necessitate the installation of an extremely large power plant, one which would not fit into the ship even if the third turret was removed. If the outer external belt armor were removed, 216,000 shp (161,000 kW) would still be required. However, no matter if the belt was taken off or not, all of the hull form aft would have to be greatly modified to accept larger propellers. The last strike against the project was the high estimated cost of $40 million, which did not include the cost of activating battleships that had been out of commission for ten years. Later calculations proved that the North Carolinas could be lightened from 44,377 long tons to around 40,541 long tons (41,192 t), at which 210,000 shp would suffice. At the trial displacement figure of 38,400 long tons (39,000 t), even 186,000 shp (139,000 kW) would be enough; the 210,000 figure was derived from a 12.5% overestimation to account for a fouled bottom or bad weather. A similar power plant to the one used in the Iowa class (generating 212,000 shp (158,000 kW)) would be enough, and if the third turret was removed there would be no problems with weight, but there was not enough space within the North Carolinas. When compared, the current power plant measured 176 ft × 70 ft × 24 ft (53.6 m × 21.3 m × 7.3 m), but Iowa's was 256 ft × 72 ft × 26 ft (78.0 m × 21.9 m × 7.9 m). Lastly, there would be an issue with the propellers; the Iowa class' were 19 ft (5.8 m) wide, while the North Carolinas were 17 ft (5.2 m). In the end, no conversions were undertaken. Designs for helicopter carriers also contained a plan for a conversion of the North Carolina''s. At a cost of $30,790,000, the ships would have been able to embark 28 helicopters, 1,880 troops, 530 long tons (540 t) of cargo and 200,000 US gal (760,000 L) of oil. All of the 16-inch and 5-inch guns would have been removed, though the number one turret would have remained so that weights added on the stern half of the ship could be balanced. In place, the ships would have received sixteen 3-inch guns in twin mounts. Displacement would be lowered slightly to a fully loaded weight of about 41,930 long tons (42,600 t), while speed would not have changed. It was estimated that the ships could serve for about fifteen to twenty years at a cost of about $440,000 a year for maintenance. However, it was found that a purpose-built helicopter carrier would be more economical, so the plans were shelved. ## Ships in class ## Endnotes

Pied butcherbird

Black and white songbird native to Australia

The pied butcherbird (Cracticus nigrogularis) is a songbird native to Australia. Described by John Gould in 1837, it is a black and white bird 28 to 32 cm (11 to 12.5 in) long with a long hooked bill. Its head and throat are black, making a distinctive hood; the mantle and much of the tail and wings are also black. The neck, underparts and outer wing feathers are white. The juvenile and immature birds are predominantly brown and white. As they mature their brown feathers are replaced by black feathers. There are two recognised subspecies of pied butcherbird. Within its range, the pied butcherbird is generally sedentary. Common in woodlands and in urban environments, it is carnivorous, eating insects and small vertebrates including birds. A tame and inquisitive bird, the pied butcherbird has been known to accept food from humans. It nests in trees, constructing a cup-shaped structure out of sticks and laying two to five eggs. The pied butcherbird engages in cooperative breeding, with a mated pair sometimes assisted by several helper birds. The troop is territorial, defending the nesting site from intruders. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed the pied butcherbird as being of least concern on account of its large range and apparently stable population. ## Taxonomy The pied butcherbird was first described by the ornithologist John Gould in 1837 as Vanga nigrogularis. The type specimen was collected near Sydney. The species name is from the Latin words niger (black), and gula (throat). Gould described Cracticus picatus in 1848 from northern Australia, calling it "A miniature representative of, and nearly allied to, but distinct from, Cracticus nigrogularis." The word picatus is Latin for "daubed with pitch", hence "black patches. This was reclassified as a subspecies of C. nigrogularis. Gregory Mathews described subspecies inkermani from Queensland and subspecies mellori from Victoria and South Australia in 1912, on the basis of smaller and larger size than the nominate subspecies respectively. Both are now regarded as inseparable from the nominate subspecies. Mathews described subspecies kalgoorli from Kalgoorlie in 1912 on the basis of its longer bill than the nominate subspecies, but is regarded today as part of subspecies picatus. Two subspecies are recognised today. The nominate subspecies nigrogularis is found across eastern Australia, and subspecies picatus is found in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and northern South Australia. The latter subspecies has a broader (3.7 cm (1.5 in) wide) white collar and a more whitish rump, with specimens becoming smaller in the more northern parts of the range. The border between the two subspecies lies in the Gulf Country and is known as the Carpentarian Barrier. Although there is a demarcation in physical characters, this is not borne out genetically, and birds from northwestern Australia have affinities with the eastern subspecies. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences indicates the pied butcherbird has expanded rapidly from many refugia during the Pleistocene. The pied butcherbird is one of six (or seven) members of the genus Cracticus, known colloquially as butcherbirds. Within the genus, it is most closely related to the Tagula butcherbird (C. louisiadensis) and hooded butcherbird (C. cassicus). The three form a monophyletic group within the genus, having diverged from ancestors of the grey butcherbird around five million years ago. The butcherbirds, Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) and currawongs (Strepera spp.) were placed in the family Cracticidae in 1914 by John Albert Leach after he had studied their musculature. American ornithologists Charles Sibley and Jon Ahlquist recognised the close relationship between woodswallows and the butcherbirds in 1985, and combined them into a Cracticini clade, which became the family Artamidae in 1994. "Pied butcherbird" has been designated the official name by the International Ornithological Committee (IOC). Black-throated butcherbird is an alternative common name, as are Break o'day boy and organbird. Leach also called it the black-throated crow shrike, a name used by Gould for subspecies nigrogularis while calling subspecies picatus the pied crow-shrike. ‘Jackeroo’ is a colloquial name from the Musgrave Ranges in Central Australia. Gould recorded Ka-ra-a-ra as a name used by indigenous people of Darwin. The Ngarluma people of the western Pilbara knew it as gurrbaru. In the Yuwaaliyaay dialect of the Gamilaraay language of southeastern Australia, it is buubuurrbu. Names recorded from central Australia include alpirtaka and urbura in the Upper Arrernte language. ## Description Like other butcherbirds, the pied butcherbird is stockily built with short legs and a relatively large head. It ranges from 28 to 32 cm (11 to 12.5 in) long, averaging around 31 cm (12 in), with a 51 cm (20 in) wingspan and weight of around 120 g (4 oz). The wings are fairly long, extending to half-way along the tail when folded. Its plumage is almost wholly black and white, with very little difference between the sexes. It has a black head, nape and throat, giving it the appearance of a black hood, which is bounded by a white neck collar, which is around 3.2 cm (1.2 in) wide. The black hood is slightly glossy in bright light, can fade a little with age, and is slightly duller and more brownish in the adult female. The neck collar in the female is slightly narrower at around 2.5 cm (1 in) and is a grey-white rather than white. Several stiff black bristles up to 1.5 cm (0.5 in) long arise from the lower lores. The upper mantle and a few of the front scapulars are white, contrasting sharply with the black lower mantle and the rest of the scapulars. The rump is pale grey, and the upper tail coverts are white. The tail is rather long, with a rounded or wedge-shaped tip. It has twelve rectrices, which are black in colour. The tail tip and outer wing feathers are white. The underparts are white. The eyes are a dark brown, the legs grey and the bill a pale bluish grey tipped with black, with a prominent hook at the end. The juvenile pied butcherbird has dark brown instead of black plumage, lacks the pale collar and has a cream to buff lores, chin, and upper throat, becoming more brown on the lower throat and breast. Its underparts are off-white to cream. The bill is dark brown. In its first year, it moults into its first immature plumage, which resembles that of the juvenile, but has a more extensive dark brown throat. Its bill is blue-grey with a dark brown or blackish tip. ### Voice The pied butcherbird has been considered the most accomplished songbird in Australia, its song described as a "magic flute" by one writer, richer and clearer than the Australian magpie. Song melodies vary across the continent and no single song is sung by the whole population. There is no clear demarcation between simple calls and elaborate songs: duets, and even larger choirs, are common. The species improvises extensively in creating new and complex melodies. One of its calls has been likened to the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Singing often takes place at dawn, and rarely late in the day. Pied butcherbirds sometimes sing on moonlit nights. Three types of song have been described: the day song is the most common, sung by birds alone or in pairs as a chorus or an antiphonal duet, generally over the course of the day and while the birds are in flight. It appears to promote bonding and act as communication. The whisper song is sung more commonly in wet or windy weather, the singer sitting in a tree warbling soft and complex harmonies for up to 45 minutes, often mimicking many other bird species as well as dogs barking, lambs bleating or even people whistling. In the breeding season, pied butcherbirds sing the breeding song at night until dawn, when they switch to the day song. This song is longer and more complex than the day song. In response to threats, pied butcherbirds may chatter or make a harmonic alarm call composed of short, loud descending notes. ### Similar species The black hood helps distinguish the pied butcherbird from other butcherbirds, the Australian magpie and much smaller magpie-lark, the latter of which also has a much smaller beak. It has a higher-pitched call than the grey butcherbird and inhabits more open habitat. The juvenile pied butcherbird resembles the grey butcherbird: it has a buff upper throat and dark brown instead of black plumage. ## Distribution and habitat The pied butcherbird is found across much of Australia, excepting the far south of the mainland, and Tasmania. It is only rarely recorded in the Sydney Basin, and absent from the Illawarra, Southern Tablelands and south coast of New South Wales. In Victoria it is found along the Murray Valley and west of Chiltern. In South Australia it is not found in the northeast of the state, nor on the Adelaide plain. It is found across Western Australia, though is absent from the Great Sandy Desert. It is generally sedentary across most of its range, with minimal seasonal movements. It is a bird of open sclerophyll forests, eucalypt and acacia woodlands and scrublands, with sparse or no understory, or low cover with shrubs such as Triodia, Lomandra or Hibbertia. It is less common in mallee scrub. In arid areas and northern Australia, it is more restricted to woodland alongside rivers and billabongs. It has become more common in southwest Western Australia with land clearing, though has become rare around Darwin on account of urban development. ### Conservation status The pied butcherbird is listed as being a species of least concern by the IUCN, on account of its large range and stable population with no evidence of any significant decline. ## Behaviour The pied butcherbird is thought to be monogamous, though its breeding habits have not been much studied. There is evidence of cooperative breeding, with some mated pairs being assisted by up to several other helper birds. These individuals help feed young and defend the nest. These pairs or small groups defend their territory from intruders, mobbing and chasing raptors and other birds, and occasionally dogs or people. They may attack animals (and people) that venture too close to the nest, with one bird coming front-on while the other may approach from behind. The maximum age recorded from banding has been 22 years 1.7 months, for an individual banded in Rockhampton in June 1988 and recovered in August 2010–7 km away. The bird was injured and had to be euthanased. ### Breeding Across most of its range, the pied butcherbird can generally be found breeding from winter to summer; eggs are laid anywhere from July to December, but mostly from September to November, and young can be present in the nest from August till February. There are reports of breeding outside these months, however. The nest is constructed of dry sticks with a finer material such as dried grass, black roly poly (Sclerolaena muricata), bark and leaves forming a cup-shaped interior. It is located in the fork of a tree, often among foliage and inconspicuous. The clutch consists of two to five (most commonly three or four) oval eggs blotched with brown over a base colour of various shades of pale greyish- or brownish-green. Larger clutches have been recorded, such as at Jandowae in Queensland, where two pairs laid eggs and were sharing incubation duties. Eggs of subspecies nigrogularis are larger, at around 33 mm long by 24 mm (1.3 by 0.95 in) wide, while those of subspecies picatus are around 31 mm long by 22 mm (1.2 by 0.85 in) wide. Incubation takes 19 to 21 days, with the eggs laid up to 48 hours apart and hatching at a similar interval. Like all passerines, the chicks are altricial—they are born naked or sparsely covered in down and blind. They spend anywhere from 25 to 33 days in the nest before fledging, though may leave the nest early if disturbed. They are fed by parents and helper birds. Brood parasites recorded include the pallid cuckoo (Cacomantis pallidus) and channel-billed cuckoo (Scythrops novaehollandiae). ### Feeding The pied butcherbird is carnivorous, and eats insects such as beetles, bugs, ants, caterpillars, and cockroaches, as well as spiders and worms. It preys on vertebrates up to the size of such animals as frogs, skinks, mice, and small birds such as the silvereye (Zosterops lateralis), house sparrow (Passer domesticus), double-barred finch (Taeniopygia bichenovii), willie wagtail (Rhipidura leucophrys), and grey teal (Anas gracilis) duckling. It has been looked upon favourably by farmers as it hunts such pests as grasshoppers and rodents. Some individuals look for scraps around houses and picnic sites, and can become tame enough to be fed by people, either by hand or by tossing food in the air. The pied butcherbird also eats fruit, such as those of sandpaper figs (Ficus coronata), native cherry (Exocarpos cupressiformis), African boxthorn (Lycium ferocissimum) and grapes (Vitis vinifera), and nectar of the Darwin woollybutt (Eucalyptus miniata). The pied butcherbird often perches on a fencepost, stump or branch while foraging for prey. It generally pounces on victims on the ground and eats them there. At times, it may hop or run along hunting ground-based food, and occasionally seize flying insects. It generally forages alone, or occasionally in pairs. The pied butcherbird has been observed hunting collaboratively with the Australian hobby, either picking off common starlings or rufous-throated honeyeaters disturbed by the larger hobby, or flushing out small birds from bushes, which the larger bird then hunts. The pied butcherbird sometimes stores food items by impaling them on a stick or on barbed wire, or shoving them in a nook or crevice. ## Cultural significance Several Australian and international composers have been inspired by and written music incorporating the songs of the pied butcherbird, including Henry Tate, David Lumsdaine (who described it as "a virtuoso of composition and improvisation"), Don Harper, Olivier Messiaen, Elaine Barkin, John Rodgers, Ron Nagorcka, and John Williamson. In the dance 'Bird Song' by Siobhan Davies, the main central solo was accompanied by the call of a pied butcherbird and this same sound provided inspiration to much of the dance, including the improvisational aspects. Composer and researcher Hollis Taylor has studied pied butcherbird song for 12 years, and has released a double CD called Absolute Bird based on fifty-plus pied butcherbird nocturnal solo songs. Taylor's 'Is Birdsong Music? Outback Encounters with an Australian Songbird' offers portraits of the remote locations where the species is found. In the now extinct Warray language spoken on the Adelaide River in Arnhem Land, Cracticus nigrogularis was known as lopolopo.

Proserpine (play)

1832 play by Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley

Proserpine is a verse drama written for children by the English Romantic writers Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary wrote the blank verse drama and Percy contributed two lyric poems. Composed in 1820 while the Shelleys were living in Italy, it is often considered a partner to the Shelleys' play Midas. Proserpine was first published in the London periodical The Winter's Wreath in 1832. Whether the drama was ever intended to be staged is a point of debate among scholars. The drama is based on Ovid's tale of the abduction of Proserpine by Pluto, which itself was based on the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone. Mary Shelley's version focuses on the female characters. In a largely feminist retelling from Ceres's point of view, Shelley emphasises the separation of mother and daughter and the strength offered by a community of women. Ceres represents life and love, and Pluto represents death and violence. The genres of the text also reflect gender debates of the time. Percy contributed in the lyric verse form traditionally dominated by men; Mary created a drama with elements common to early nineteenth-century women's writing: details of everyday life and empathetic dialogue. Proserpine is part of a female literary tradition which, as feminist literary critic Susan Gubar describes it, has used the story of Ceres and Proserpine to "re-define, to re-affirm and to celebrate female consciousness itself". However, the play has been both neglected and marginalised by critics. ## Background In March 1818 the Shelleys moved to Italy, where their two young children, Clara and William, soon died. Mary entered into a deep depression and became alienated from Percy. She recovered to some extent with the birth of her son Percy later in 1819. Between 1818 and 1820, she absorbed a considerable amount of drama, reading many of William Shakespeare's plays, some with Percy. Percy believed that Mary had a talent for dramatic writing, and convinced her to study the great English, French, Latin, and Italian plays as well as dramatic theory. He even sought her advice on his play The Cenci, and she transcribed the manuscript of his drama Prometheus Unbound. The Shelleys also attended operas, ballets, and plays. Percy also encouraged Mary to translate Vittorio Alfieri's play Mirra (1785), a tragedy about father-daughter incest which influenced her own novel Mathilda. Mary Shelley's studies were broad during these years. She began to learn Greek in 1820 and read widely. She had also been reading Ovid's Metamorphoses since at least 1815 and continued to do so in 1820. Her other reading included Jean-Jacques Rousseau's philosophical treatise Emile (1762) and his sentimental novel La nouvelle Héloïse (1761), as well as Thomas Day's children's book The History of Sandford and Merton (1783–89). Critic Marjean Purinton notes that her reading around the time she was composing Proserpine included "educational treatises and children's literature, replete with moralisms concerning gendered behaviors", as well as her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) and Original Stories from Real Life (1788). These latter were part of the conduct book tradition that challenged the gender roles of women. ## Composition and publication Mary Shelley composed Proserpine in 1820, finishing it on 3 April according to her journal. Percy Shelley contributed two lyric poems: "Arethusa" and "Song of Proserpine While Gathering Flowers on the Plain of Enna". A fragment of the manuscript survives, housed in the Pforzheimer Collection at the New York Public Library, and demonstrates the couple working side-by-side on the project. According to their friend Thomas Medwin, Percy enjoyed the play, sometimes altering the manuscript as he was reading. In her biography of Mary Shelley, Miranda Seymour speculates that both Midas and Proserpine were written for two young girls Mary Shelley met and befriended, Laurette and Nerina Tighe, daughters of friends of the Shelleys in Italy. Their mother was also a former pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley's mother. That same year, Mary Shelley wrote the children's story Maurice for Laurette. In 1824 Mary Shelley submitted Proserpine for publication to The Browning Box, edited by Bryan Walter Procter, but it was rejected. The play was first published in 1832 in the London periodical The Winter's Wreath. She cut one-fifth of the play—about 120 lines—for this version, deleting some of the stories from the first act, including Percy's poem "Arethusa", and rewrote individual lines. (She included "Arethusa" in her collection of Posthumous Poems of Percy Shelley in 1824.) Mary Shelley also added an ominous dream to the play, foreshadowing Proserpine's abduction. Her efforts to publish the play in these periodicals and journal entries written during the play's composition suggest that Proserpine was meant to be children's literature. ## Plot summary Act I begins with Ceres leaving her daughter Proserpine in the protection of two nymphs, Ino and Eunoe, warning them not to wander. Proserpine asks Ino to tell her a story, and she recites the tale of Arethusa. After the story, the group gathers flowers. The two nymphs wander off, seeking ever more flowers, and lose sight of Proserpine. When they return, she is gone. They search for her in vain. Ceres returns, angry and frightened at the loss of her child: > > I will away, and on the highest top Of snowy Etna, kindle two clear flames. Night shall not hide her from my anxious search, No moment will I rest, or sleep, or pause Till she returns, until I clasp again My only loved one, my lost Proserpine. Act II begins some time later. Ino laments: "How all is changed since that unhappy eve\! / Ceres forever weeps, seeking her child / And in her rage has struck the land with blight". Arethusa comes, to tell Ceres that she saw Pluto make off with Proserpine. Ceres appeals to Jove for assistance, and Iris appears, saying that Proserpine's fate is fixed. However, Jove agrees that if Proserpine does not eat the food of the Underworld, she can return. The group leaves to fetch Proserpine, who believes she has not consumed any tainted food, but she is reminded by Ascalaphus, a shade of the Underworld, of some pomegranate seeds that she ate. Ceres, Ino, and Arethusa volunteer to exile themselves to the Underworld, taking their treasures, such as fertility, with them. However, their sacrifice is not permitted. Iris relates Jove's decision regarding Proserpine's fate: > > When Enna is starred by flowers, and the sun Shoots his hot rays strait on the gladsome land, When Summer reigns, then thou shalt live on Earth, And tread these plains, or sporting with your nymphs, Or at your Mother's side, in peaceful joy. But when hard frost congeals the bare, black ground, The trees have lost their leaves, & painted birds Wailing for food sail through the piercing air; Then you descend to deepest night and reign Great Queen of Tartarus. Ceres promises that only during the time when Proserpine lives with her will the earth be fertile. ## Genre Proserpine is a verse drama in blank verse by Mary Shelley which includes two lyric poems by Percy Shelley. In the early nineteenth century, lyric poetry was associated with male poets, and quotidian poetry (i.e., the poetry of the everyday) with female poets. The division of labour in Proserpine reflects this trend. Percy's poems help emphasise the mythic nature of Proserpine's story; he continued this transcendental description of Proserpine in his Prometheus Unbound. Mary's drama consists of carefully described objects, such as flowers. Furthermore, her characters do not speak in soliloquy—except in Percy's poems—rather, "nearly every speech is directed feelingly toward another character and is typically concerned with describing another's emotional state, and/or eliciting an emotional reaction." Dialogue in Proserpine is founded on empathy, not the conflict more typical of drama. Mary Shelley also refused to embrace the visual sensationalism of early nineteenth-century theatre, focusing instead on "scenes of heightened emotion". Scholars have disputed whether or not Mary Shelley intended her play to be staged. Most concur that it was never meant for performance, agreeing with Romanticist Alan Richardson that the play is "lyrical drama" or "mental theater" in the style of Romantic closet drama "with its emphasis on character over plot, on reaction over action, and its turn away from the theater". However, eighteenth-century theatrical scholar Judith Pascoe challenges this conclusion, pointing to detailed stage directions in the manuscript: "Ceres and her companions are ranged on one side in eager expectation; from the cave on the other, enter Proserpine, attended by various dark & gloomy shapes bearing torches; among which Ascalaphus. Ceres & Persephone embrace;–her nymphs surround her." From this evidence, she argues that Shelley intended her play to be staged. Literary scholar Jeffrey Cox has argued that Proserpine, along with Midas, Prometheus Unbound and other plays written by the Leigh Hunt circle, were "not a rejection of the stage but an attempt to remake it". Turning from the traditional genres of tragedy and comedy of manners, these writers reinvented drama by writing masques and pastoral dramas. He argues that Midas and Proserpine are a pair of mythological dramas that demonstrate "the forces of oppression". For him, Proserpine "celebrates a pastoral world...threatened by male sexual violence and the tyranny of a sky god". ## Themes Mary Shelley expanded and revised the Roman poet Ovid's story of Proserpine, which is part of his larger Metamorphoses. The tale is based on the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, which explains the change of the seasons through Persephone's visits to the Underworld: when she is confined to Hades's realm, autumn and winter cover the earth, and when she returns to live with her mother, spring and summer bloom. The myth depicts the victory of male violence over female procreation. Like Percy Shelley, John Keats, and Lord Byron, Mary Shelley was interested in rewriting the classical myths; however, like other Romantic women writers, she was particularly interested in challenging their patriarchal themes. In revising the Proserpine myth, she placed women and their power at the centre of the narrative. For example, Ovid represents Proserpine as "an unreflective child, willfully straying after flowers in infantile abandon" while "Shelley portrays Proserpine as a thoughtful, empathetic adolescent" who wants to find flowers for her mother. Ovid's version of the myth focuses on violence, particularly the abduction and rape of Proserpine, while Shelley's play focuses on the suspenseful search for Proserpine. Her version highlights Ceres and the nymphs' grief and Proserpine's own desire to escape from the Underworld instead of the rape (the rape happens offstage). In contrast, other nineteenth-century adaptations often expanded the rape scene, romanticising it and turning it into a scene of courtship. Women and women's issues dominate Mary Shelley's drama—no male characters appear, with the brief exception of Ascalaphus. However, as Romanticist Marjean Purinton argues, there is a strong masculine presence in the play even without male characters, suggesting "the ubiquitous presence of patriarchal power in the domestic sphere". Although the myth is fundamentally about rape and male tyranny, Shelley transforms it into a story about female solidarity and community—these women are storytellers and mythmakers who determine their own fate. Ceres's love—a mother's love—challenges the power of the gods. Shelley tells the story almost entirely from Ceres's point of view; "her play elegiacally praises female creativity and fecundity as 'Leaf, and blade, and bud, and blossom.' " Shelley writes active, rather than passive, roles for Proserpine and Ceres. For example, it is Ceres's anger, not her grief, that brings "winter's blight". However, Proserpine's abduction is prefigured in the story of Arethusa and, as literary scholar Julie Carlson points out, the women can only join after Proserpine has been abducted. In Shelley's version of the myth, paradise is lost not through the fault of women but through the interference of men. Pluto's "egotistical, predatory violence" is juxtaposed with Ceres's "loving kindness, her willingness to sustain life, [and] her unswerving devotion to her child". Sex, in this myth, is represented as a separation from the feminine and a forced surrender to the masculine. Pluto's domination of Proserpine symbolises "a culture based on acquisition and brutality, a culture that covertly justifies (when it does not overtly celebrate) male mastery". Proserpine and Midas are often seen as a pair of contrasting plays. Proserpine is a play of female bonding, while Midas is a male-dominated drama; male poets participate in a contest in Midas while in Proserpine female characters participate in communal storytelling; "where Midas lives in his golden palace imagining himself at the center of an all-powerful court, Ceres laments leaving the pastoral enclave she shares with Proserpine for Jove's court"; Midas focuses on gold, while the women in Proserpine enjoy flowers; and "where the society of Midas is marked by egotism, greed, and strife, the female society of Proserpine values community, gift-giving, and love". ## Legacy and reception As feminist literary critic Susan Gubar argues, Mary Shelley's drama is part of a female literary tradition, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, H.D., Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Doris Lessing, which has responded to the story of Ceres and Proserpine. These writers use the myth as a "way of dealing with their experience of themselves as daughters growing up into womanhood and potential motherhood....they use the myth of Demeter and Persephone to re-define, to re-affirm and to celebrate female consciousness itself." Poets such as Dorothy Wellesley, Rachel Annand Taylor, Babette Deutsch, and Helen Wolfert as well as Mary Shelley portray the procreative mother as a heroine who creates an arena for nurturing relationships that challenge "the divisions between self and other" that rest at the centre of patriarchy. Feminist poet Adrienne Rich writes that "the loss of the daughter to the mother, the mother to the daughter, is the essential female tragedy", and it is this tragedy that Mary Shelley discusses in her play. When A. Koszul first published a transcription of Proserpine in 1922, he argued "that the little classical fancies which Mrs. Shelley never ventured to publish are quite as worthy of consideration as her more ambitious prose works". However, his "Introduction" to the play speaks mostly of Percy Shelley and his contribution to Mary Shelley's works. In fact, as he explains, he decided to publish to contribute to the Percy Shelley centenary. Since their original publication, neither Midas nor Proserpine has received much critical attention. Critics have either paid attention only to Percy Shelley's poems, or have ignored the plays altogether. Literary critic Elizabeth Nitchie writes that the plays are "distinguished only by the lyrics that [Percy] Shelley wrote for them", and Sylvia Norman contends that they "do not really call for analytical and comparative study". While Frankenstein has remained a powerful cultural force since its publication, Mary Shelley's other works have rarely been reprinted and scholars have focused almost exclusively on Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and Mary Shelley, wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, with the publication of works by Mary Poovey and Anne K. Mellor in the 1980s and The Other Mary Shelley in 1993, more attention has been paid to Mary Shelley's "other" works, such as her dramas. ## See also - Mary Shelley bibliography

God of War (franchise)

Video game series

God of War is an action-adventure game franchise created by David Jaffe and developed by Sony's Santa Monica Studio. It began in 2005 on the PlayStation 2 (PS2) video game console and has become a flagship series for PlayStation, consisting of nine installments across multiple platforms. Based on ancient mythologies, the series' plot follows Kratos, a Spartan warrior who becomes the God of War and comes into conflict with various mythological pantheons. The earlier games in the series are based on Greek mythology and see Kratos follow a path of vengeance against the Olympian gods; the later games are based on Norse mythology and see Kratos on a path of redemption while also introducing his son Atreus as a secondary protagonist. Santa Monica Studio has developed all main entries, while Ready at Dawn and Javaground/Sony Online Entertainment-Los Angeles (SOE-LA) developed the three side games. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has published all games except the mobile phone installment, which was published by Sony Pictures Digital. The first seven games make up the Greek era of the franchise. God of War (2005), God of War II (2007) and God of War III (2010) comprise its main trilogy; the first two were released on the PS2 with the third on the PlayStation 3 (PS3). A prequel, Ascension (2013), was also released for the PS3. Other games include Chains of Olympus (2008) and Ghost of Sparta (2010) for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) and Betrayal (2007) for mobile phones that supported the Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME). The Norse era began with the 2018 game God of War, which was released for the PlayStation 4 (PS4) and later Windows in January 2022. It was accompanied by a short prequel, A Call from the Wilds (2018), a text-based game through Facebook Messenger. A sequel, Ragnarök, was released in November 2022 for the PS4 and PlayStation 5 (PS5) and concluded the Norse era, which received an epilogue in the form of an expansion pack titled Valhalla in December 2023; a Windows port of Ragnarök was released in September 2024. Games in the series have been praised as some of the best action games of all time. The series has received numerous awards, including several Game of the Year recognitions for the 2005 and 2018 installments. Some games have also been remastered for newer PlayStation platforms. As of November 2023, the franchise has sold an estimated 66+ million games worldwide, and is PlayStation's most profitable first-party brand. Strong sales and support of the series led to the franchise's expansion into other media, such as three comic book series and three novels. A film adaptation of the original installment had been in development but was ultimately canceled; however, a television series adaptation of the Norse era is in development for Amazon Prime Video. Merchandise includes artwork, clothing, toys, and prop replicas, as well as the games' soundtracks, including a heavy metal album, Blood & Metal (2010), featuring original music by various bands, who were inspired by the series. ## Games ### First era (Greek mythology) God of War was first released in North America on March 22, 2005, for the PlayStation 2. After ten years in the service of the Olympian gods, Spartan soldier Kratos is tasked by Athena to find Pandora's box, the key to defeating Ares, the God of War, who is running amok through Athens. A series of flashbacks reveals that Kratos was once the servant of Ares, who saved Kratos and his army from annihilation in battle, but tricked him into killing his family, which forced his metamorphosis into the "Ghost of Sparta". Kratos eventually finds Pandora's Box, and after finally killing Ares, he ascends to Mount Olympus to become the new God of War. God of War II was first released in North America on March 13, 2007, for the PlayStation 2. Angry at his fellow gods, Kratos runs amok across the city of Rhodes. Zeus intervenes and betrays Kratos, who is saved by the Titan Gaia. She tells him he must now find the Sisters of Fate, who can change his fate and prevent his death at the hands of Zeus. Kratos is ultimately successful and as he is about to kill the god, Athena sacrifices herself to save Zeus and preserve Olympus, and tells Kratos that he is Zeus' son and that he betrayed Kratos out of fear. Kratos then joins forces with Gaia and the Titans to attack Olympus. God of War: Betrayal was released on June 20, 2007, for mobile phones supporting the Java Platform, Micro Edition. It is the only game in the series to be released as a two-dimensional (2D) side-scroller and the first that was released on a non-PlayStation platform. The narrative of the game takes place between the events of Ghost of Sparta and God of War II. Kratos is framed for murder, and rampages across Greece seeking the true assassin. Kratos succumbs to bloodlust and kills Ceryx, the son of the god Hermes—an act that alienates him from his fellow gods. God of War: Chains of Olympus was first released in North America on March 4, 2008, for the PlayStation Portable. Its narrative takes place sometime between Ascension and God of War during Kratos' ten years of service to the gods. Kratos halts a Persian invasion of the Greek city of Attica, and learns that the world has been plunged into darkness by the god Morpheus. Kratos investigates the abduction of the sun god Helios, and prevents the Machiavellian plan of the goddess Persephone to use the Titan Atlas to destroy the world. God of War III was first released in North America on March 16, 2010, for the PlayStation 3. Reigniting the Great War, Kratos is soon abandoned by the Titans, who were only using him to exact their own revenge. Now seeking revenge against both the Titans and Olympian gods, he is helped by the spirit of Athena, who was elevated to a new level of understanding and instructs him to seek the Flame of Olympus in order to defeat Zeus. Kratos engages the gods and the Titans in a series of battles across the Underworld and Olympus and learns that Pandora's Box is within the Flame. He discovers that Pandora herself is the key to pacifying the Flame and allowing him to open the Box, at the expense of her life. After finally killing Zeus and with Olympus destroyed, Kratos refuses to help Athena assume the role of new patron of mankind and disappears. God of War: Ghost of Sparta was first released in North America on November 2, 2010, for the PlayStation Portable. Set between the events of God of War and Betrayal, the God of War Kratos is still haunted by visions of his mortal past and embarks on a quest to discover his origins by finding his mother, Callisto. He learns that his brother Deimos was taken by the gods and imprisoned by the God of Death, Thanatos, and decides to find and save his sibling. Although successful, Thanatos engages the brothers in combat, and kills Deimos. Kratos then kills Thanatos and returns to Olympus, further enraged at the gods. God of War: Ascension was first released in North America on March 12, 2013, for the PlayStation 3. It is the only game in the series to feature multiplayer, which is online-only for both competitive and cooperative play. Predating Chains of Olympus, the game is set roughly six months after Kratos was tricked into killing his wife and daughter, and sees him imprisoned by the three Furies for breaking his blood oath to Ares. With the help of the oath keeper and Ares' estranged son Orkos, Kratos learns that the God of War and the Furies plan to overthrow Mount Olympus and that Ares chose Kratos as his servant to help him for that very purpose. The Spartan escapes his imprisonment and eventually kills the Furies, as well as Orkos, who begs for release. Although free of Ares' bond, Kratos begins to suffer the nightmares that plague him for years. ### Second era (Norse mythology) God of War: A Call from the Wilds is a short text-based game, released through Facebook Messenger on February 1, 2018. The game serves as a prequel story to 2018's God of War, and follows Atreus on his first adventure in the Norse wilds. Additionally, a smartphone companion app called Mimir's Vision released on April 17, 2018, and provides some background for the Norse setting. God of War was released worldwide on April 20, 2018, for the PlayStation 4, and for Windows (PC) through Steam on January 14, 2022, which marked the first main installment released on a non-PlayStation platform. The game was a new direction for the series, not only by its new mythological setting, but also by its gameplay. Many years after the events of God of War III, Kratos has ended up in the world of Norse mythology in ancient Norway in the realm of Midgard, and has a son named Atreus. After Kratos' second wife—Atreus' mother—Faye passes away, the two set out on a journey to fulfill her final wish of spreading her ashes at the highest peak of the nine realms, later revealed to be in Jötunheim by new ally Mímir. Along their journey, they are attacked by the Æsir god Baldur, who was sent by the Allfather Odin to get to Faye in order to prevent Ragnarök, unaware she had died. After Kratos eventually kills Baldur, the three-year-long Fimbulwinter begins, with Ragnarök soon to follow. While Baldur's mother, the Vanir goddess Freya, swears revenge on Kratos, he and Atreus complete their journey and discover that Faye was a Giant who had foreseen the future and that Atreus was originally named Loki. God of War Ragnarök was released worldwide on November 9, 2022, for the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5, marking the first cross-gen release in the series. At the end of the three-year Fimbulwinter, Kratos, Atreus, and Mímir are confronted by Odin and the God of Thunder Thor. After dueling Thor, the three set out on a journey across the nine realms in hopes of finding a way to prevent the world-ending event, Ragnarök. Along the way, they are confronted by a vengeful Freya, but they eventually make amends. Unable to prevent Ragnarök—which is discovered to only destroy Asgard, the home of the Æsir—Kratos, Atreus, and their allies unite the realms in a war against the Æsir gods in their home realm. Kratos battles Thor once again, but Thor is killed by Odin for refusing to kill Kratos. Kratos, Atreus, Mímir, and Freya then engage Odin in battle and defeat the Allfather as Asgard is destroyed. Returning home to Midgard, Atreus, as Loki, decides that he needs to go and find any remaining Giants and bids a heartfelt farewell while Kratos learns that he is destined to become a revered god. Along with Freya and Mímir, they begin to rebuild the realms and restore peace. A free downloadable content pack titled Valhalla was released on December 12, 2023, and serves as an epilogue to Ragnarök, following Kratos and Mímir in a series of trials in Valhalla. Through the trials, Kratos comes to terms with his past life in Greece and takes the mantle as the Norse God of War. Ragnarök along with Valhalla was released for Windows on September 19, 2024. ### Collections and remasters God of War Collection was first released in North America on November 17, 2009, for the PlayStation 3—the franchise's first appearance on the platform. It is a remastered port of the original God of War and God of War II. The games were ported by Bluepoint Games and feature high-definition 1080p anti-aliased graphics at 60 frames per second and trophies. Sanzaru Games later ported the collection to the PlayStation Vita and it was released in May 2014—the franchise's only appearance on this platform. God of War: Origins Collection was first released in North America on September 13, 2011, for the PlayStation 3. It is a remastered port of the two PlayStation Portable installments in the series—Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta. God of War Origins was ported by Ready at Dawn and features 1080p high-definition video, anti-aliased graphics at 60 frames per second, DualShock 3 rumble features, trophies, and it is the only God of War release to feature Stereoscopic 3D. God of War Saga was released in North America on August 28, 2012. It is a collection of five of the God of War games for the PlayStation 3, released as part of Sony's PlayStation Collections line. The collection includes the original God of War, God of War II, God of War III, Chains of Olympus, and Ghost of Sparta. It features two Blu-ray Discs—God of War I and II on the first and III on the second—and a voucher to download Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta. The games retain the same features as their first PS3 releases. God of War III Remastered was first released in North America on July 14, 2015, for the PlayStation 4—the franchise's first appearance on the platform. It is a remastered version of God of War III, and features full 1080p support targeted at 60 frames per second, a photo mode, and all downloadable content of the original. The game's announcement and release was in celebration of the franchise's tenth anniversary. It was ported by Wholesale Algorithms. ## Gameplay The series consists of eight single-player-only games, and one that includes multiplayer. Throughout the first era, the games featured a third-person, fixed cinematic camera with the exception of Betrayal, which is the only installment to feature a 2D side-scrolling view. For 2018's God of War and Ragnarök, the camera was switched from being fixed and became an over-the-shoulder free camera. A first-person camera is featured in God of War III and Ascension during certain scripted sequences. Throughout the series, the player controls the character Kratos in a combination of hack and slash combat, platforming, and puzzle game elements to achieve goals and complete the story (platforming elements were removed from the second era games due to the camera change). The 2018 installment added Kratos' son Atreus, and although the game is played entirely as Kratos, there are times when the player may choose to passively control Atreus (a button is dedicated to Atreus, and he will fire an arrow from his bow depending on where the camera is pointed). While Atreus is still an accompanying character in Ragnarök (in addition to a couple of other characters), there are some story missions where the player takes full control of Atreus; his combat is similar to Kratos' but he uses a bow. Throughout the Greek games, Kratos' main weapon is a pair of double-chained blades that appear in three iterations: the Blades of Chaos, the Blades of Athena (or Athena's Blades), and the Blades of Exile. They each perform similarly, but differ in the types of combos and amount of damage each yields, as well as cosmetic differences. Other weapons are also obtained during the games and vary in gameplay. Magic is also used, and four abilities are typically acquired. God of War III differs in that instead of separate abilities, there are four primary weapons that possess their own respective magic offensive. The game also features "Items"—additional secondary weapons with limited usage, such as the Bow of Apollo. With each new game, most weapons and magic are lost via a plot device, and a new arsenal of weapons and abilities are acquired during gameplay. Ascension differs from the previous games in that instead of acquiring new weapons that are kept throughout the entire game, the player collects up to five World Weapons (such as a sword or a javelin) that have limited usage. When there is not a World Weapon equipped, the player can punch or kick foes as part of a new mechanic added to the game. In the Norse games, Kratos' primary weapon is a magical battle axe called the Leviathan Axe. It can be thrown and summoned back to his hand, similar to Thor's hammer Mjölnir. Later on in 2018's God of War, he recovers the Blades of Chaos, which is retained in Ragnarök. They perform similarly as they did during the Greek games, but with different abilities. Both the Leviathan Axe and Blades of Chaos, as well as the Draupnir Spear introduced in Ragnarök, can be upgraded to use special magical attacks called runic attacks. Each weapon has a light and heavy runic attack, and the player can choose which runic attacks to equip on the weapons. The series offers combo-based combat, and includes a quick time event (QTE) feature, also called context sensitive attacks, which is initiated when the player has weakened a foe or to perform a defensive maneuver. It allows limited control of Kratos during the QTE cinematic sequence; success ends the battle, while failure usually results in damage to the player. As well as the QTE system, Ascension features a prompt-less free-form system, allowing players the choice of when to attack or dodge based on the enemy's actions. A grab maneuver can be used on minor foes. The Norse games changed this up; after an enemy has been weakened enough, a prompt will appear above its head, and depending on the enemy, Kratos may rip it in half or grab them and throw them into other enemies, among other possible outcomes. He will also jump on top of and ride large enemies, such as ogres, causing them to attack other enemies, similar to the cyclopes in the Greek games. Relics, which the player can use in successive games (such as Poseidon's Trident obtained in the original God of War allowing Kratos to swim underwater for extended periods) are also found and necessary for game progression. Kratos often has a special ability, which provides temporary invulnerability and increased attack damage. This ability has become an ongoing feature of gameplay throughout the series—Rage of the Gods in the original God of War and Ascension, Rage of the Titans in God of War II, Rage of Sparta in God of War III, and Thera's Bane in Ghost of Sparta. This ability can be recharged by building hits on foes in combat, and gaining game-specific orbs. Thera's Bane, however, is recharged automatically. While Kratos does not retain any relics from the Greek era in 2018's God of War, he does have a rage ability, called Spartan Rage, and with this ability, Kratos uses powerful bare-handed attacks, as opposed to weapons, to greatly damage enemies. Ragnarök enhanced the Spartan Rage ability, giving two other variants, one providing health and another delivering a powerful weapon attack depending on the weapon equipped. Gorgon Eyes and Phoenix Feathers, found throughout the Greek games in unmarked chests (white chests in Ascension), increase the maximum amount of health and magic, respectively. Minotaur Horns, which increase the Items and Fire meter's maximum length, are available in God of War III and Ghost of Sparta, respectively. The Items meter allows the use of secondary weapons, called Items, and the Fire meter allows the use of the Thera's Bane ability. The meters are increased in increments and reach their maximum once a certain number of Eyes, Feathers, and Horns are found. Other chests contain green, blue, or red orbs. Green orbs replenish the player's health, blue orbs replenish magic allowing further usage, and red orbs provide experience points (XP) for upgrading weapons and magic for new, more powerful attacks, and replenish the Rage meter in the original God of War. Gold orbs found in God of War II and Ascension, and white orbs in God of War III, replenish the Rage meter instead of red orbs; the Rage meter in Ascension is also refilled by landing attacks on foes. Chests with changing colors, which allow players to choose which meter to replenish, have also been available. Red orbs can also be collected by killing foes and destroying certain inanimate objects. Bosses and more powerful opponents release a combination of colored orbs when killed via the quick-time feature. For the Norse games, Apples of Iðunn replaced the Gorgon Eyes to increase the maximum length of the health meter, while Horns of Blood Mead increase the maximum length of the rage meter. The Norse games change the green and red orbs to stones, which need to be stomped in order to replenish the health and rage meters. Magic is also done differently. Instead of collecting blue orbs to replenish magic, there is a cool down time on magical runic attacks, and once that cool down time is up, the magical runic attack can be used again. Furthermore, players accumulate different crafting resources, primarily Hacksilver, to create and purchase new items, such as new armor or upgrading existing armor and weapons, and XP is used for learning new combat skills. Chests in the Norse games provide a variety of different items. With the exception of Ascension, each installment offers a challenge mode, which yields extra red orbs (or XP), secret costumes, and behind-the-scenes videos. Bonus content can also be unlocked by defeating the game's difficulty levels. The Norse games also include a challenge mode, located in the realm Muspelheim, which rewards various items upon completion. Battle arenas, which allow players to set difficulty levels and choose their own opponents, are included in God of War II, God of War III, and Ghost of Sparta. Excluding Betrayal, the Greek games were known for including a quick-time sex minigame in each installment until Ascension, which dropped the mini-game. Ascension is the only installment in the series to feature multiplayer, which is online-only for both competitive and cooperative play. Up to eight players on two teams of two to four players (or a four to eight player deathmatch) battle for control of a map in order to earn rewards from the gods. Players can also fight each other in one-on-one matches. Players must sell their champion's soul to either Zeus, Hades, Ares, or Poseidon, which allows players to try different weapons, armor sets, and powers inspired by the god of their choice, and extras can be unlocked. ## Development ### Main series #### PlayStation 2 After the success of their first game Kinetica (2001), Santa Monica Studio began development of the original God of War in 2002, and unveiled it two years later at SCEA Santa Monica Gamers' Day 2004. Game director and creator David Jaffe said that although the idea for God of War was his own, the concept owed a debt to Capcom because he had played Onimusha and said "let's do that with Greek mythology". He was inspired in part by the 1981 feature film, Clash of the Titans, saying, "the real high concept for me was ... merging it with Heavy Metal magazine". He said he liked both "the kids stuff ... with Greek mythology" and the idea of adding more adult themes such as sex and violence. He was also inspired by the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark. Although the game is based on Greek mythology, the development team gave themselves "lots of freedom" to modify the myths, and Jaffe said they took the "coolest aspects of the subject" and created art and story using those elements. Director of visual development and lead concept artist, Charlie Wen, drew inspiration from these films as well as more contemporary films such as Gladiator (2000) for tonal inspiration to lead the visual design of Kratos, other characters, and the world of God of War. The gameplay of the Strider arcade franchise was also a vital influence on God of War, and the developers described the gameplay "as merging the action of Devil May Cry with the puzzle-solving of Ico" and noted that players would be able to "sunder enemies with a single move, such as by ripping them in half". The game uses Santa Monica's Kinetica engine, which they developed for Kinetica. A sequel to God of War was first teased at the end of its credits, which stated, "Kratos Will Return". God of War II was officially announced at the 2006 Game Developers Conference (GDC). David Jaffe stepped down and became the creative director of its sequel and God of War's lead animator Cory Barlog assumed the role of game director. Barlog said that in the game, players would see "a larger view of Kratos' role within the mythological world." Like God of War, the game uses Santa Monica's Kinetica engine. Magic attacks became an integral part of the combat system and it was more refined. New creatures and heroes from the mythology, and more boss battles were added. Both Jaffe and Barlog said that they did not view God of War II as a sequel, but rather a continuation of the previous game. Jaffe said that they did not want to include the Roman numeral number two (II) in the title for this reason, but they did not want the title to convey the impression it was an expansion pack. Both Jaffe and Barlog said that the reason God of War II appeared on the PlayStation 2 instead of the PlayStation 3—which was released four months prior to God of War II—was because "there's a 100 million people out there that will be able to play God of War II as soon as it launches." Barlog assured that the game would be playable on the newer platform, which originally had PlayStation 2 backwards compatibility. #### PlayStation 3 God of War III was first mentioned by Cory Barlog at a God of War II launch event, and it was officially announced at the 2008 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). After serving as game director during the first eight months of development, Barlog left Santa Monica for other opportunities and Stig Asmussen took on the role, having previously been the lead environment artist and art director on God of War and God of War II, respectively. Asmussen said that one of the greatest challenges in developing God of War III for the PlayStation 3 was the "complexity of everything"; individual tasks, such as designing Helios' decapitation, could take a year because the "level of detail [that was] expected [was] so high and intricate, it [crossed] multiple departments." He said that the PlayStation 3's hardware capabilities allowed more flexibility in character creation and interaction with the environment. The engine for God of War III was ported from the first two installments to the PlayStation 3. As the game was being developed, the code department swapped out PlayStation 2 components with PlayStation 3 components. They replaced the renderer, the particle system, and the collision system. Although they were re-using the engine from God of War II, the core engine for God of War III was brand new. Between E3 2009 and the time the game shipped, morphological anti-aliasing (MLAA) was added, which graphics engineer Ben Diamand said "improved edges dramatically and saved substantial amounts of frame-rate." Diamand also said that "depth-of-field, motion blur, crepuscular 'God' rays and refraction were either added or improved in quality and speed" during that same time period. On April 12, 2012, Sony released a teaser image for Ascension on its official PlayStation Facebook page, which was followed by the game's announcement on April 19 on PlayStation.Blog. Todd Papy, who had previously worked as a designer on God of War and God of War II and as design director on God of War III, assumed the role of game director; God of War III director Stig Asmussen was busy with another project at Santa Monica and did not work on Ascension. The announcement officially confirmed the game's title and Papy said it was not titled God of War IV to avoid confusion because it is a prequel, rather than a sequel, to the trilogy. The game features a retooled God of War III engine, enabling online multiplayer battles for up to eight players. The decision to add multiplayer came about from curiosity, according to lead combat designer Jason McDonald. The multiplayer was first tested using Kratos, and McDonald said the testers had "a lot of fun". Seeing their reaction made the team feel that the multiplayer had value and they then began to put the "God of War spin on it". In the developmental transition from God of War III to Ascension, one of the graphics engineers, Cedric Perthuis, noted that the limits of the God of War III engine restricted artist creativity, so they "tried to remove or push those limits as far as possible without losing any performance." Ascension did not have a graphical leap over its predecessor like God of War III did. Dynamic lighting was added, which allowed for development of the Life Cycle gameplay mechanic. Particle effects were also greatly improved upon from God of War III. #### PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 Santa Monica began work on the fifth main installment in 2014, which was confirmed by the returning Cory Barlog at the first annual PlayStation Experience on December 6 that year. The official announcement came at the 2016 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) with a gameplay demo, which also confirmed that Barlog had returned to the series as game director. The game was deliberately titled God of War with no numeral or subtitle because although it is a continuation of the series, "we [reimagined] everything." Other mythologies were also considered for the new setting, but Norse was picked to keep the focus on Kratos; there was also consideration to use a different protagonist, but it was decided to keep Kratos as he "is intrinsically tied" to the series. In adapting the Norse myths, Barlog said there were so many different translations and interpretations, and just like they did with Greek mythology in the previous games, they found ways to parallel path things from the myths to fit their story. Most of the development team that worked on the original God of War worked on the new installment. They claimed that they matched the new gameplay with the same level of accessibility as the previous installments. Some gameplay characteristics found in the previous installments were cut, such as jumping, swimming, and instant-death platforming challenges; these were cut due to the camera being closer to Kratos. Although Ascension had introduced multiplayer to the series, the team dropped the mode to focus on the single-player experience. The Leviathan Axe was chosen as Kratos' new main weapon because the developers wanted a more grounded direction for the game. Although the game never reaches this number, the enemy count was increased to be able to support up to 100 enemies on-screen; God of War III and Ascension could do up to 50. Although the game was built for the standard PlayStation 4, Barlog confirmed that it would "benefit from the power" of the PlayStation 4 Pro; an updated version of the PlayStation 4 that can render games in 4K resolution and was released a few months after God of War was announced. The game's story was estimated to take 25–35 hours to complete, which is significantly more than the previous four main installments, which each took an average of 10 hours to complete. As part of Sony's larger efforts to port their first-party exclusive games to Windows, Santa Monica Studio announced in October 2021 that God of War would be released for Windows on January 14, 2022, with support for graphics options. This in turn marked the first main entry in the series to release on a non-PlayStation platform. Following the announcement of the 2018 installment in June 2016, Cory Barlog confirmed that the 2018 game would not be Kratos' last. The ending of the 2018 installment also teased a sequel; it ended with Ragnarök looming, as well as a secret ending that showed a vision of the Æsir god Thor confronting Kratos and Atreus at the end of Fimbulwinter. During the 2020 PlayStation 5 (PS5) Showcase event on September 16, a new God of War was officially announced for a 2021 release on the newer console. When the game was first announced, it was only announced as a PS5 title; however, in June 2021, it was confirmed that the game would release on both the PS4 and PS5, marking the first cross-gen release in the series. Development was partly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in the game being delayed to 2022. In September 2021, the game's title was confirmed as God of War Ragnarök. During the 2021 PlayStation Showcase event, Eric Williams, who worked on every previous installment, was confirmed as the game's director, continuing the previous era's tradition of having a different director for each game; Barlog served as a producer on Ragnarök. It was also during this event that it was confirmed that Ragnarök would be the finale to the Norse era of the series. The main reason Santa Monica decided to end the Norse era with Ragnarök was due to the game's size and scale. The 2018 installment and Ragnarök each respectively took five years to develop, and they did not want to take another five years, totaling 15 years, to tell one story. The game supports options for players to run the game in either higher resolution or better performance, including 4K at 30 frames per second (fps), 1080p resolution at 60fps, a high frame resolution mode in 4K at 40fps, and a high frame performance mode that syncs to 120 hertz. The latter two high frame options are only available for the PS5 version of the game and require monitors with HDMI 2.1. Due to the game also being on PS4, it does not fully utilize the capabilities of the PS5. The PS4 version is a visual improvement over the 2018 installment while the PS5 version "is essentially an enhancement of what's already possible [on the PS4]". The game does, however, include several features exclusive to the PS5 hardware, such as 3D audio, haptic feedback, higher frame rate, and overall better graphics. On December 7, 2023, during The Game Awards 2023 event, Santa Monica Studio revealed a free roguelite DLC expansion to Ragnarök titled Valhalla. This expansion was released five days later on December 12. The expansion acts as an epilogue to Ragnarök and sees Kratos and companion Mimir complete various trials in Valhalla in order for the former to come to terms with his past in Greece. #### Future Prior to the release of the 2018 installment, Cory Barlog confirmed that after the Norse era, future games could see the series tackling either Egyptian, Hindu, or Maya mythology. He also said that although the 2018 installment (and subsequently Ragnarök) focused on Norse, it alluded to the fact that there are other mythologies co-existing in the world. Barlog also said that he liked the idea of having different directors for each game and although he may not direct another God of War, he would still be at Santa Monica to work on future games. ### Side games #### PlayStation Portable Game developer Ready at Dawn pitched the idea of a God of War game for the PlayStation Portable to Santa Monica Studio soon after the original God of War launched. Cory Barlog officially confirmed the development of Chains of Olympus at a God of War II launch event, stating "It is its own story that connects to the overall story." Chains of Olympus uses a proprietary, in-house engine referred to as the Ready at Dawn engine, which expanded on the engine created for their previous game, Daxter (2006). Originally designed for the PlayStation Portable's restricted 222-megahertz (MHz) processor, Ready at Dawn convinced Sony to increase the clock speed of the PSP to 333-MHz, which they did in a firmware upgrade. The faster processor allowed for more realistic blood effects, lighting effects, and shadows as well as improved enemy intelligence, but noticeably decreased battery life. After the game's completion, game director Ru Weerasuriya stated multiplayer options and other puzzles, characters, and dialogue had to be removed due to time constraints. Ghost of Sparta was announced on May 4, 2010, on PlayStation.Blog. According to Sony, Ready at Dawn utilized "state-of-the-art visual technologies" that allowed "higher quality environments and characters." Ghost of Sparta offers "over 25% more gameplay" than Chains of Olympus, while adding more enemies on screen and more boss encounters. Development of Ghost of Sparta took 23 months to complete. Due to Weerasuriya's schedule at Ready at Dawn, he could not return to direct; Dana Jan, the lead level designer for Chains of Olympus, became director for Ghost of Sparta. At Comic-Con 2010, Jan noted that when development began in 2008, the goal was to make the game bigger than Chains of Olympus, which had apparently pushed the PSP to its functional limits. Jan stated that Ghost of Sparta took the PSP to its "absolute capacity", with another feature being more on-screen foes. The game concept was originally used as a teaser for players who obtained the platinum trophy from God of War III. The trophy revealed a site called spartansstandtall.com, which became the official site for Ghost of Sparta on May 4. Jan stated the reason they chose to have the game take place between God of War and God of War II was because "It seemed to make a lot of sense to fill in that void." #### Mobile Betrayal was announced by Sony Online Entertainment at a press conference in Los Angeles in May 2007. The game utilizes a total of 110 different animations and features a 2D rendition of the series' three-dimensional (3D) graphics. Game director Phil Cohen said that although the game was enjoyable to develop, the greatest challenge was creating a single tileset and palette swapping scheme that was diverse enough to portray multiple environments with only several hundred kilobytes, and that met Santa Monica Studio's high standards. Cohen wrote the initial design document between September and October 2005, and revisited it in August 2006, the month development started. The versions for high-end handsets were completed in April 2007, with final versions for low-end handsets completed by June 2007. The porting team adapted the game to over 200 handsets in a matter of weeks. Both David Jaffe and Cory Barlog ensured that the Betrayal development team captured the feel of the combat and visual style, and were "helpful with feedback and positive support". ## Adaptations ### Live action #### Unproduced feature film A film adaptation of the first game was announced in 2005. Game creator David Jaffe confirmed that a completed script had been written by David Self and would be sent to an unspecified director. He said that Universal Studios was behind the making of the God of War movie, but was unaware of its status, and later expressed doubt that the film would be made. In September 2010, Jaffe gave an update, stating that an unspecified actor had been cast as Kratos and they were "pretty good, if that ends up true". In July 2012, The Hollywood Reporter said that writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan had been hired to adapt the God of War film. The writers told IGN that they intended to "humanize" Kratos and explore his past. Melton said that they were emotionally invested and it could become a series of films, and that Ares "[would] become a more proactive villain". A script had been "turned in" and the film had a budget of US$150 million. Following the release of 2018's God of War, with no updates on the original game's film, rumors about a potential adaptation of the 2018 game began circulating. Pacific Rim: Uprising's (2018) director Steven S. DeKnight stated he would like to direct an adaptation of that game and talked with Sony about making it R-rated. In May 2021, however, a Sony spokesperson confirmed that there was no God of War film adaptation in development. #### Amazon Prime Video series On March 7, 2022, Deadline reported that a live action series was said to be in negotiations at Amazon Prime Video by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, creators of The Expanse, and Rafe Judkins, the showrunner for The Wheel of Time. During an investor briefing on May 26, 2022, Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan confirmed that a God of War television series was in development for Amazon Prime Video. The series was officially ordered on December 14, 2022, and is being produced by Sony Pictures Television and Amazon Studios in association with PlayStation Productions, and it will premiere on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide. Executive producers include Santa Monica Studio's Creative Director Cory Barlog, PlayStation Productions' Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan, Santa Monica Studio's Yumi Yang, and Vertigo Entertainment's Roy Lee, with Santa Monica Studio's Jeff Ketcham serving as a co-executive producer. It was also confirmed that the Prime Video series would adapt the Norse era, beginning with the events of the 2018 installment. It was originally being written by Fergus and Ostby, with Judkins serving as showrunner, who were all also going to be executive producers. By January 2024, writing was underway. In October, however, it was reported that Fergus, Ostby, and Judkins left the project as the studios wanted to start over and go in a different direction. Prolific creator and showrunner Ronald D. Moore was then hired on as the series writer, showrunner, and as an executive producer. ### Documentaries God of War: Unearthing the Legend (75 minutes, 2010) is a documentary about the God of War franchise and is hosted by Peter Weller. The production discusses the relationship between the God of War games and Greek mythology, and features members of the God of War III development team and professional historians. It was included as part of the God of War III Ultimate Edition (North America) and Ultimate Trilogy Edition (Europe, Australia, and New Zealand) packages. On March 25, 2010, it was released on the PlayStation Store in North America to purchase. God of War – Game Directors Live (80 minutes, 2010) is a documentary featuring five game directors of the God of War series: David Jaffe (original God of War), Cory Barlog (just God of War II at the time), Ru Weerasuriya (Chains of Olympus), Stig Asmussen (God of War III), and Dana Jan (Ghost of Sparta). The documentary takes the form of an interview panel hosted by G4's Alison Haislip, with the five game directors, 150 members of PlayStation.Blog, and members of GodofWar.com and SpartansStandTall.com. It was filmed at the El Portal theater in Los Angeles on September 1, 2010, and was released as a pre-order bonus for Ghost of Sparta in North America on November 2, 2010, and was included with the Origins Collection and later released on the PlayStation Store. Raising Kratos is a YouTube documentary of Santa Monica Studio's five-year process in making 2018's God of War, showing the "herculean effort" that went into reviving the franchise. The documentary was announced on April 20, 2019, the one year anniversary of the game's launch, and was released the following month on May 10. ### Comic series and novels A six-issue comic book series titled God of War, written by Marv Wolfman with art by Andrea Sorrentino, was published by WildStorm and DC Comics on a bi-monthly schedule from March 2010 to January 2011. Taking place during the Greek era, the narrative switches between Kratos' past and present; it occurs while he is a soldier of Sparta and involves his search for the Ambrosia of Asclepius, which has legendary healing properties and eventually saved his plague-ridden daughter, Calliope. Kratos also embarks upon a quest to destroy the same elixir to deny it to the worshippers of the slain god Ares, who wish to resurrect him. The series was collected into a trade paperback in March 2011. In the lead up to Ascension's release, Santa Monica released a graphic novel titled God of War: Rise of the Warrior on the God of War website that featured a social experience from October 2012 until March 2013. The graphic novel was a prequel story that tied into the single-player of Ascension, and was the backstory of the player's multiplayer character. A two-volume comic series was published by Dark Horse Comics and follows Kratos' journey between the events of God of War III and the 2018 installment. It was written by Chris Roberson with art by Tony Parker. The first volume, also titled God of War, was published monthly from November 2018 to February 2019; Issue \#0 was included digitally with the three different special editions of the 2018 game and the four-issue volume serves as a direct prequel story to the game. The second volume, also four issues and subtitled Fallen God, was published monthly from March to June 2021; it was originally to begin publication in June 2020, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Taking place before the first volume, Fallen God covers the timespan from God of War III to that first volume. Both series were collected as trade paperbacks in May 2019 (Volume 1) and December 2021 (Volume 2), respectively. The God of War novels recount the events of the games and offer deeper insights into their stories. God of War, the official novelization of the first game, was written by Matthew Stover and Robert E. Vardeman. It was published on May 25, 2010, by Del Rey Books. God of War II, the second novelization of the series, was written by Vardeman alone and was published by Del Rey Books on February 12, 2013. The third novelization in the series, titled God of War – The Official Novelization, is of 2018's God of War, skipping a novelization of God of War III. It was released on August 28, 2018, by Titan Books and was written by Cory Barlog's father, James Barlog. ### Tabletop card game An official tabletop card game titled God of War: The Card Game was released by CMON Limited on October 25, 2019. Created by Alexandru Olteanu and Fel Barros, the card game adapts the events of the 2018 installment. Players take on the role of the Norns, the Fates of Norse mythology, as they try to prevent Ragnarök with a different combination of characters and events from the game, providing many variations to completing the card game. ## Music Seven God of War soundtracks have been commercially released and have featured several composers, including Gerard K. Marino, Ron Fish, Winifred Phillips, Mike Reagan, Cris Velasco, Winnie Waldron, Marcello De Francisci, Jeff Rona, Tyler Bates, and Bear McCreary. On March 1, 2005, God of War: Original Soundtrack from the Video Game was released on CD by SIE as an exclusive product for the Sony Connect Music Store. It was praised for its well-developed orchestral themes, and the creative use of ancient and ethnic instrumentation. The composers were also praised for avoiding the production of never-ending action themes. God of War II: Original Soundtrack from the Video Game was released on CD by SIE on April 10, 2007. Praised as strong, the album features ominous orchestral pieces, and each composer's contributions are slightly more distinctive than the previous soundtrack. God of War III: Original Soundtrack from the Video Game was released on CD by SIE and Sumthing Else on March 30, 2010. It was also included as downloadable content in the God of War III Ultimate Edition and Ultimate Trilogy Edition collections. The soundtrack was praised as an orchestral success and the best score in the series at the time. The original scores for God of War, God of War II, and God of War III were nominated for Best Original Score at the 2005, 2007, and 2010 Spike Video Game Awards, respectively. The God of War Trilogy Soundtrack was included with the God of War III Ultimate Edition and Ultimate Trilogy Edition collections as downloadable content. The Trilogy Soundtrack consists of the original scores for God of War, God of War II, and God of War III. It was praised by critics as the best way to experience the series' musical development, and allows the listener to note the development of the composers during the series. On October 18, 2010, God of War: Ghost of Sparta – Original Soundtrack from the Video Game was released on the iTunes Store by SIE. It was also included as downloadable content as part of the Ghost of Sparta pre-order package and includes three previously unreleased tracks from Chains of Olympus. Several tracks were cited as being intended for purely contextual purposes, and the remaining tracks rated well in comparison to the soundtracks of the main installments in the series. God of War: Ascension (Original Soundtrack) differed from the previously released soundtracks as it was composed by Tyler Bates alone, and is the only God of War score that he has worked on. It was released on March 5, 2013, on iTunes by SIE and La-La Land Records. It was included as downloadable content in the God of War: Ascension–Collector's Edition and Special Edition. Reviewers praised it for being powerful, rich, and pulsing, though felt it was repetitive at times. For both God of War (2018) and God of War Ragnarök, famed TV series composer Bear McCreary was employed to compose the music. God of War (PlayStation Soundtrack) was released on April 20, 2018, by Sony Classical Records. McCreary composed completely new music for the game, not reusing any music from the Greek era. However, he was inspired by their sounds, such as "deep choirs, pounding drums, and shrieking brass", and reinvented them for the Nordic setting using Nordic ethnic instruments. The soundtrack was well received, receiving various nominations at award shows as well as winning the award for Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition at the 22nd Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. God of War Ragnarök (Original Soundtrack) was released on November 9, 2022, by Sony Classical Records. Faroese singer Eivør was brought back to contribute to the soundtrack. Irish folk artist Hozier was also featured on the song, "Blood Upon the Snow". ### God of War: Blood & Metal God of War: Blood & Metal is a heavy metal homage by various bands on the Roadrunner Records label, and features original music inspired by the God of War video game series. The EP was released for purchase on March 2, 2010, and is available from ShockHound and the iTunes Store. It was also included as downloadable content in the God of War III Ultimate Edition and Ultimate Trilogy Edition collections, which included a bonus track. The second track, "Shattering the Skies Above" by Trivium, and the bonus track, "Even Gods Cry" by The Turtlenecks, were made into music videos. 1UP.com (2.5/5) said, "it's not offensive to [the] ears" and "mainstream listeners may enjoy [the album]". Square Enix Music Online (8/10) stated the album is a "good selection of metal music" and listeners will be "surprised with the variety of music". Track listing ## Critical reception With physical and digital copies combined, the God of War franchise has sold an estimated 66+ million games worldwide (as of November 2023). According to former Santa Monica employee Aaron Kaufman, the God of War franchise is Sony's most profitable brand. God of War (2005), God of War II, Chains of Olympus, God of War Collection, God of War III, God of War (2018), and Ragnarök each received critical acclaim from several reviewers as compiled by review aggregator Metacritic, with the 2005, 2018, and Ragnarök titles being tied for the highest score in the franchise at 94/100. Betrayal and Ghost of Sparta only received generally favorable reception. Ascension also only had a generally favorable reception and, not including the PlayStation Vita port of God of War Collection, it has the lowest score in the series from Metacritic (80/100). At the time of its release, Raymond Padilla of GameSpy wrote that the original God of War was the "best action game ever to grace the PS2". Other critics similarly said that it was one of the best action games of all time; it received over a dozen "Game of the Year" awards, including "Overall Game of the Year" at the 9th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. In 2009, it was named the "seventh-best" PlayStation 2 game of all time on IGN's "Top 25 PS2 Games of All Time" list. God of War II was also on IGN's list, and was named the "second-best" PlayStation 2 game of all time. God of War II was similarly called one of the best action games of all time and is considered the swan song of the PlayStation 2 era. In November 2012, Complex.com named God of War II the best PlayStation 2 game of all time—where God of War was named the 11th best—and consider it better than its successor, God of War III. Betrayal was acclaimed for its fidelity to the series in terms of gameplay, art style, and graphics. Chains of Olympus was praised for "fantastic" graphics and "tight and responsive" controls for the PSP at the time. In 2008, IGN awarded Chains of Olympus the "Best PSP Action Game", the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded it with "Hand-Held Game of the Year" during the 12th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, and was listed as the best PSP game by GamePro in September 2010. God of War III received praise for its graphics, in particular of Kratos; at the time, IGN stated that Kratos was "perhaps the single most impressive-looking character ever in videogames." IGN also said that, at the time, God of War III "redefines what the word 'scale' means with regards to videogames, as it throws you into scenes with Titans that are larger than entire levels in some other games." God of War III received awards for "Most Anticipated Game of 2010" and "Best PS3 Game" at the 2009 and 2010 Spike Video Game Awards, respectively. The game also won the "Artistic Achievement" award at the 2011 BAFTA awards. Ghost of Sparta was praised for its graphics and story, with Chris Pereira of 1UP saying that it was "a more personal story than the [previous] GOW games." It received several awards at E3 2010, including "Best Handheld Game", "Best PSP Game", and "PSP Game of Show", and won "Best Handheld Game" at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards, as well as "Portable Game of the Year" at the 14th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. 2018's God of War received particular praise for its art direction, graphics, combat system, music, story, use of Norse mythology, characters, and cinematic feeling. Many also felt that it had successfully revitalized the series without losing the core identity of its predecessors. It won several awards, among which were "Game of the Year" and "Best Game Direction" at The Game Awards 2018, "Best Storytelling" and "PlayStation Game of the Year" at the 2018 Golden Joystick Awards, and "Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction" at the 22nd Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. The series has also received criticism because of problems with puzzles, weapons, and technical issues. Chains of Olympus was criticized by G4, who stated that the game "occasionally suffers from screen tearing and framerate drops", and that some of the puzzles "are so maddeningly difficult to solve". The game was also criticized for its lack of variety in enemies, its continued use of puzzles that require players to move boxes, and its relatively short story. God of War III also received some criticism. GameFront's Phil Hornshaw said it had an overly cruel protagonist, and the game assumed that the players reveled in the misery and violence as much as Kratos did. IGN complained about the game's weapons, and said "that two of the three additional weapons that you'll earn are extremely similar to your blades. They have unique powers and slightly different moves, but by and large, they're more of the same." Ghost of Sparta received criticism from Eurogamer, which said that the "game's primary problem ... is in its in-built focus" and that "there is a sense that Ghost of Sparta is a step back for the series if you've played [God of War III]." Some reviewers stated that Ascension's story was not as compelling as previous installments, with IGN stating that in comparison to Zeus and Ares, "the Furies don't quite cut it". The multiplayer received a mixed response. Although reviewers claimed gameplay translated well into the multiplayer, they were critical of the balance and depth of combat. Edge magazine approved of the multiplayer, stating it was an "evolutionary step" with "some fine ideas ... that [would] form part of this genre's future template." 2018's God of War received some criticism, for example, a couple of reviewers disliked that the fast travel option unlocked very late into the game. The collections have also received praise. IGN (9.4/10) awarded God of War Collection (PS3) the "Editor's Choice" Award and praised the enhanced resolutions, lower price point and smoother frame rates, and stated it was the "definitive way to play the game[s]". Due to the success of God of War Collection, Sony announced that further titles would receive similar treatment for release under its new "Classics HD" brand. The Origins Collection was similarly well received. IGN (9/10) stated "Sony succeeded at making good games better", although GamePro criticized it for its lack of new bonus content. God of War Saga also received praise. Ryan Fleming of Digital Trends wrote that the collection "is perhaps the best value buy for any console available," although the collection is not likely for fans of the series, but rather inexperienced players or newcomers. God of War III Remastered was met with generally favorable reception. Praise was given to the smoother textures and improved frame rate, though because the original already had remarkable graphics, the changes were not major, and reviewers said these changes were not a strong enough argument to rebuy the game for US$40. ## See also - Characters of God of War - Kratos (God of War)

Anachronox

2001 role-playing video game

Anachronox is a 2001 role-playing video game produced by Tom Hall and the Dallas Ion Storm games studio. The game is centered on Sylvester "Sly Boots" Bucelli, a down-and-out private investigator who looks for work in the slums of Anachronox, a once-abandoned planet near the galaxy's jumpgate hub. He travels to other planets, amasses an unlikely group of friends, and unravels a mystery that threatens the fate of the universe. The game's science fiction story was influenced by cyberpunk, film noir, and unconventional humor. The story features a theme of working through the troubles of one's past. Gameplay in Anachronox is a mix of real-time exploration and turn-based combat; the player controls a party of up to three characters as they explore a 3D environment of futuristic cities, space vessels, and outdoor areas. Inspirations for the game include older role-playing video games such as Chrono Trigger and the Final Fantasy series, animator Chuck Jones and the novel Ender's Game. The game was built with a heavily modified version of id Software's Quake II engine, rewritten chiefly to allow a wider color palette, emotive animations and facial expressions, better lighting, particle effects, and camera effects. The development of Anachronox was long and difficult. Originally planned for a third-quarter 1998 release, it was released worldwide in June 2001 for Microsoft Windows. Tom Hall planned to create a sequel with the copious content removed during production. Critics enjoyed the game and awarded it high marks for its design and story. Ion Storm's Dallas offices were closed mere days after the game's release. In 2002, Anachronox cinematic director Jake Hughes spliced together gameplay footage and cutscenes to create a feature-length, award-winning machinima film. ## Gameplay Anachronox is a role-playing game similar in nature to many Japanese role-playing video games like Final Fantasy. The player controls a party of up to three characters as they explore a 3D environment (colloquially known as a "field map") of futuristic cities, space vessels, and outdoor areas. Players can swap for new party members, talk to non-player characters, and collect and shop for equipment and items. When players near an interactive character or item, a floating arrow-shaped electronic device called the LifeCursor appears, which lets the player click on the person or item. After a certain point in the story, players can travel by shuttle to other planets, triggering cutscenes of the shuttle trips. Each playable character has a unique skill, such as lockpicking, which may be used to solve puzzles. Some sequences involve minigames, such as an unnamed mission in which the player pilots a fighter spaceship to destroy enemies with lasers. Certain field maps also feature simple two-dimensional minigames, including the original games Ox and Bugaboo. The protagonist Boots also possesses a camera, which the player can use to take screenshots for their own enjoyment or as part of quest objectives. Enemy encounters trigger a combat mode. As in Chrono Trigger, enemies are openly visible on field maps or lie in wait to ambush the party and thus are not random. Similar to Final Fantasy's Active Time Battle, each character has a meter that gradually fills with time. When the meter is full, characters can physically attack enemies, use MysTech magic, unleash BattleSkill attacks, use items, move to a different position, or use a nearby object to attack, if present. For playable characters and computer-controlled enemies, each attack has their number of hit points (a numerically based life bar) get reduced, which can be restored through healing items or MysTech slags. Use of MysTech and equippable shield cells require Neutron-Radiated Glodents (NRG), a separate energy reserve displayed beneath a character's life bar. NRG is replenished through certain items. Use of BattleSkills require Bouge, a third bar beneath NRG that automatically fills with time; players can use different BattleSkills depending on how full the Bouge bar is. Some characters must undergo certain plot developments to unlock their BattleSkills. When a playable character loses all hit points, he or she faints. If all the player's characters fall in battle, the game ends and must be restored from a previously saved game. Winning battles earns experience points and raises characters' levels, granting them improved statistics. These statistics can be viewed through the status screen, which displays important character information and current quests. Unlike many other RPGs, Anachronox displays a character's attributes with qualitative descriptors (such as Poor and Excellent) instead of integers. ### MysTech The Mysterium Tech (or MysTech) system allows players to use in-game objects collectively known as MysTech, and create new MysTech by using a configuration screen accessed through Elementor Host items. MysTech cannot be used until they are awakened after a certain story event. Eight basic colors of MysTech exist, representing different elements; for example, green represents poison. Players can use MysTech to inflict damage upon enemies, plague them with certain status effects (such as freezing them in place), or heal party members. Casting status effect-MysTech on party members will cure them if afflicted by enemy status spells. MysTech slabs and Elementor Hosts can be found as treasure in the game world or bought from shops. To create MysTech, players place colored bugs (found on small hills in several game locations) in empty slots on an Elementor Host. The color of bugs placed in the function slot determines the color of MysTech, while other slots modify the power and/or range of the spell. Players can add special bugs known as Cobalt Crawlers to make a spell target all enemies instead of one; a Host filled with eight Crawlers unlocks a secret spell. The effect of bugs can be amplified by feeding them petals from Lifeflowers, which can be found scattered throughout the world of Anachronox. Special types of Hosts with two or three different functions allow players to pick which MysTech function to use in battle. ## Plot ### Setting The game takes place on Anachronox (a portmanteau of anachronism and noxious, meaning "poison from the past"), a small planet floating inside a huge artificial sphere known as Sender One. Husks of futuristic cities exist on artificial tectonic plates, which constantly shift to connect different parts of the planet. Inhabitants believe that diseased aliens were quarantined there eons ago, resulting in the name Anachronox. Northern Anachronox is clean and upscale, while southern Anachronox is crime-ridden and run-down. Humanity travels to different planets from Sender One, which had been the center of a transportation system for a race of non-humanoids enabling faster-than-light travel. Inbound and outbound traffic stops at Sender Station, an orbiting construct above Sender One with hotels and a red light district. Civilizations conduct business using currency like the one-dollar coin known as a "loonie", while several people collect MysTech—shards of rock with markings, believed to be dormant weapons or art pieces created by an extinct alien race. MysTech were first found 300 years ago, and are poorly understood, though avidly collected. Other planets in Sender One include Sunder, Hephaestus, Democratus, and Limbus. The galaxy's scientific community is headquartered on the temperate planet of Sunder, and people are only permitted to go there if they are sufficiently intelligent. Hephaestus is an important religious center. A mostly volcanic planet, Hephaestus hosts a town and temple complex of monks who study MysTech. Democratus is climatically similar to Earth, with regions of desert, snow, forest, and prairie. Several populations of different sentient species exist on the surface, but the planet is ruled by a race of tall, thin humanoids with large craniums who dwell on a large mechanical ring constructed around the planet. This race is obsessed with the ideal of democracy, and though they possess incredible scientific and engineering knowledge, they are constantly bogged down by their own ineptitude and the frailties of the democratic process. Limbus is known as the "planet of death", as voyagers never return; its surface is arid and rocky, with sparse vegetation. A planet mentioned but not seen in the game is Krapton, home to superheroes and villains. Most of Krapton's human population has fled, tired of being constantly abducted and saved by warring superpeople. ### Characters The protagonist of Anachronox is Sylvester "Sly Boots" Bucelli, a human and former private detective on Anachronox. Twenty-nine years old and described as "bold, brash, and overconfident", Boots has gotten himself into trouble and now runs his agency out of rented storage space above a seedy bar. His only friends are PAL-18, his spirited, sarcastic robot assistant since childhood, and Fatima Doohan, his secretary. Fatima was fatally injured and digitized by Boots onto a PDA-analogue "LifeCursor", where she bitterly lives to render assistance. Several allies join Boots over the course of the game; first is 71-year-old Grumpos Matavastros, a "scholar, outdoorsman, eccentric recluse, and renaissance man"—and a very grumpy person. A former curator of the MysTech museum on Anachronox, Grumpos devotes his life to studying the artifacts. Dr. Rho Bowman joins the party on Sunder; she is a brilliant scientist who's been branded a heretic after publication of her book, MysTech Awake\! The team then gains support from Democratus, an eccentric planet boasting a planetary ring and brilliant technology. Said technology includes having the planet shrink to human height to be part of the team. Two further allies are the femme fatale Stiletto Anyway—a 25-year-old former companion of Boots known for being stealthy and aloof—and Paco "El Puño" Estrella, a washed up superhero who's turned to alcoholism after his comic book series was canceled. Their foes include Detta, a heavyset crime boss/kingpin on planet Anachronox, and several other monsters and shady characters. ### Story Sly Boots lives in a cheap apartment above Rowdy's, a bar in the seedy "Bricks" section of South Anachronox. Grumpos Matavastros commissions Boots to find a piece of MysTech, but a crime boss called Detta accosts them and steals it. Grumpos, Boots, and robot assistant PAL-18 then seek out Dr. Rho Bowman, an expert on MysTech, at an institute for troublesome scientists on Sunder. She undertakes an experiment to activate MysTech, apparently causing the destruction of Sunder. Rho and the others escape the planet on a shuttle, and drift in space for seventeen days until they are brought on board a habitat ring around the planet Democratus. Rho discovers that all MysTech is now active, and can grant powers and spells. Boots pilots a fighter ship to save Democratus from insectoid invaders known as the Verilent Hive. The heroes return to Sender Station's Lounge of Commerce; Democratus joins the party, the High Council having shrunken the planet to human height. While searching for equipment, Boots earns money as an erotic dancer and encounters Stiletto Anyway, an old flame who's become an assassin and plots revenge against Detta. Rho explains that the universe operates on the big bounce principle; a universe that forms with a Big Bang will eventually suffer a Big Crunch, giving rise to a new big bang. She explains that Sunder was destroyed by an injection of matter from the previous universe, which will hasten the current universe's big crunch. If enough matter is switched between universes, the previous one can escape a big crunch and the current one will cease to exist. The team heads to Hephaestus, transformed to a tourist destination now that MysTech is active. They realize MysTech functions can be customized through the use of small, colored bugs and a MysTech host. Sly gains audience with the Grand Mysterium, who tells him that in the next universe, species known as "Chaos" and "Order" fought a bitter war. Order enslaved Chaos in the current universe, but Chaos wishes to escape to the previous universe to prevent future ones from existing and thus eradicate Order. The Mysterium tells Sly he must find and seal off the gate to the previous universe, and to journey to Limbus. The team is captured en route by comic supervillain Rictus; Boots meets former superhero Paco in his prison. Rictus flushes them into empty space; the High Council of Democratus restores the planet to its original size to save them. Scenes of reflection reveal the past on Anachronox. Stiletto had been Sly's young assistant at his upscale agency; he was in love with her, but Fatima was in love with him. Detta abducted Stiletto, spurring Sly's search. Her love unrequited, Fatima went into his office one night to leave a note of resignation. Sly burst in with news of Stiletto's location, and he and Fatima pursued Detta across Anachronox by flying car. Sly lost control, wrecking it and accidentally killing Fatima. Suffering from major depression, Sly ran up debts with Detta to pay for Fatima's revival inside the LifeCursor. The team regather at Democratus and journey to Limbus, where they meet creatures of the same race as the Grand Mysterium. They repel invaders called the "Dark Servants" from an orbital portal. The leader of Limbus explains that though Chaos is enslaved in the current universe, the Dark Servants (who originate from the current universe) are trying to free them and have found a way into the previous universe, where they initiated the destruction of Sunder. MysTech is a gift from the forces of Order to help the current universe's inhabitants fight Chaos. The team return to Anachronox to find Rowdy, a disguised citizen of Limbus who has been searching for the gate to the previous universe. Rowdy notes that they must destroy the key to the gate, now in the possession of Detta. The team infiltrate his fortress, kill him, and prepare to destroy the key at the gate itself—the fountain spiral of Anachronox. Grumpos seizes it, revealing himself to be a Dark Servant; he escapes with the agents of Chaos into the previous universe. Sly and the others prepare to follow them and save the universe; the game ends as they approach the gate. ## Development ### Conception Ion Storm began developing Anachronox in 1996, funded by Eidos Interactive as part of a three-game deal alongside Daikatana and an unplanned third game. Formal announcement followed in April 1997, promising a third-quarter 1998 release. Tom Hall, veteran designer and one of the founders of Ion Storm, helmed the project and originated most of its story and design. Other founding members of the team were Todd Porter (producer), Jake Hughes (associate producer and director of cinematics), Ben Herrera (artist), Brian Eiserloh (programmer), and David Namaksy (lead mapper). Mapper Larry Herring was hired after being mentored by John Romero and submitting a custom Doom 2 map to Tom Hall. Hall first conceived Anachronox in his bathroom, prompting him to install a whiteboard and sound-recorder in his shower, as well as several notepads around his house for future ideas; he had conceived the character Sly Boots years earlier in college. He wrote a 460-page design document (completed in May 1997) outlining the universe of Anachronox, beyond the game's scope; other game design documents of the period, he noted, were usually only 125 pages in size. He then condensed the story, leaving a third beyond the scheduled game. The game's design phase lasted three months. Hall made plans for two expansion packs from the outset of development, owing to the huge story. Developers told Next Generation the story would be "Campbellian" and feature immense environments. Hall noted in mid-1997, "Not since Keen has a universe been so clear in my head." Tom Hall announced that Anachronox would feature a "turbulent story with a roller coaster of emotion", and promised it would bring personality and humor to the role-playing genre. Hall aimed to make an emotionally gripping, cinematic experience from the beginning: "I want this game to answer the question, 'Can a computer make you cry?' I want to make the characters so warm and friendly and lovable and identifiable... I want to start them off in fun situations, but as the game goes on, I want the atmosphere to get darker and darker. Friends betray the lead character, other friends die, and you will feel some of what they feel because you have been with these people for 50 hours, and in a sense, lived part of their lives with them." Hall remarked that the characters were facets of his childhood. He later compared the name Anachronox (meaning poison from the past) and the internal struggles of each character, caused by turbulent events in their pasts and "psychic poison." Hall aimed to feature high-quality direction and camera-work in Anachronox, reminiscent of epic cinematic themes in role-playing video games like the Final Fantasy franchise. Hall enlisted producer Jake Hughes to direct cut scenes; Hughes had previously worked on several short independent films. Developers used real-time game cutscenes instead of live-action cinematics to avoid "[taking] players out of the game." Hall remarked, "All these games switch to cutscenes that look five hundred times better than the game. The secret is not to let the cutscenes kick the game's ass." Tom Hall chose the Quake engine for Anachronox; its developer John Carmack took interest in its use for a role-playing game. Ion Storm would soon switch to the Quake II engine, necessitating a transition from December 1997 to March 1998. The team would implement engine support for 32-bit color, particle systems, a spline-based camera scriptor, facial deformations, and lip-synching. The team mimicked filmography via sweeping camera shots to compensate for graphical limitations. Facial deformation involved moving the vertices of a character's face, thereby creating emotional expressions and body language. Developers built the first models in Lightwave; the main characters had polygon counts of 500–700. By the end of 1997, Hall had scripted interaction with 130 non-player characters for 160 planned locations. Hall cited Chrono Trigger as a strong influence; previewers drew parallels with the Final Fantasy series and Ultima III. As in Chrono Trigger, battles were scripted and not caused by random, unavoidable encounters. Hall explained, "if there's a dragon guarding a door, I want the chance to say, 'whoah, look at the time, gotta run', not, 'think I'll check this door. (\*roaaar\*) Dragon? Where the hell was that?\!?'" The team expanded the Final Fantasy-style combat by allowing actions to be queued in advance. Hall listed some of his inspirations for Anachronox in mid-2000: "In movies, some inspirational people are Spielberg, Hitchcock, George Roy Hill, Rob Reiner, and now Sam Mendes. Also a big fan of Chuck Jones, who directed Warner Brothers cartoons. Novels: Gateway, Ender's Game, Snow Crash, Hitchhiker's, so many more. Games: Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, LucasArts adventures (Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer rock), Ape Escape (buy it now), Mario, Ultima III, Wizardry I, oh, I'm sure I'm forgetting some\!" Hall also drew dramatic inspiration from a scene in Chrono Trigger in which the characters discuss the theme of regret around a campfire. ### Programming and design As production continued, Tom Hall dubbed the game's scripting language "APE" (Anachronox Programming Language). Hall explained, "I call it my new Apple II because it's so much fun to program in and it takes all the drudgery out of it. It's sort of if you mushed together C, Basic and Java in a way—for programming people it's sort of Windows based. It began as a defined dialogue window, but provided variables so that you could position and move a picture. So from there it grew like UNIX with little bits and pieces, and you have things that initialize data to the window, things that constantly update the window, and things that happen after the window, in little code chunks and with that you can do any little thing." Hall wrote and coded the mini-game Bugaboo for Anachronox in 15 hours to demonstrate the environment's simplicity. Other tools developed for the game were B.E.D. (a battle editor), ION Radiant (for level design, based on QERadiant), NoxDrop (for item and character placement), and Planet (a spline-based camera system coded by Joey Liaw). Ion Storm worked with QuakeEd developer Robert Duffy to create QERadiant, later adapted to ION Radiant. Hall lauded Planet: "you can control entities on paths, trigger events, manipulate particles, and do just about anything you please. One of the more common team beliefs is that the only true limit to Planet is the person controlling it." Hall aimed to provide several end-user modification tools, such as one to allow gamers to create their own MysTech elements. Other programs would allow implementation of new dialogue, voice-acting, and camera work. Ion Storm developed tutorials and documentation for each tool. Developers tasked both art and map design personnel with creating levels, ensuring visual quality. Hall implemented a "grow as you play" philosophy, choosing to show certain features and statistics (like "Beat" or the use of MysTech) only after the player enabled their use. Developers sought to make the game accessible to expert and casual players through two statistic displays—numerical or qualitative (using categories such as "very good" or "bad"). Hall disparaged complicated number systems found in other games: "One of the things I hate about RPGs is, you've got, like, 'here's this thing and here's that thing' and it's like 'this is 52 and that's 53' I mean, what's the difference? It's like, OK it's 'a point,' and the formula will come up to be like 'two points' and like, sure, that's going to make a difference. So now I have to hit the guy three times..." Hall also sought to ensure players knew their next goal, and invented the character of Fatima Doohan to keep track of missions. Fatima's name is a pun born from the phrase, "What am I doing?" Hall named her after the experience of loading an old saved game in an RPG and having forgotten what comes next in the current quest or storyline. Ion Storm contracted Soundelux Design Music Group to provide music for Anachronox. The firm hired Bill Brown for additional music. Tom Hall was impressed with Brown's work, particularly music for the planet Democratus. Hall worked with musician Ron Jones and a local Dallas band to record the game's two funk numbers by mid-1998. Tom Hall planned for each character to have their own theme music, and for songs to change via interaction or exploration. He spoke of the planned music, "The Anachronox sound will be industrial, mixed with forties bluesy swing. As you get on later in the game, the music gets scarier, more chaotic, and gets down to hard-core metal." Developers integrated DirectMusic support in 1999 to allow dynamic changing of background music. Sound programmer Henrik Jonsson implemented 3D sound and other capabilities using the Miles Sound System. Developers also planned to use software called Magpie Pro to lip-sync animated mouths to spoken words. The team chose not to record voices for each line of dialogue, as Tom Hall felt certain speech would become repetitive. The Undermain Theatre group of Dallas provided several voices. Tom Hall voiced PAL-18 reportedly because "no one else got it goofy enough". ### Promotion and later development Ion Storm debuted a trailer for the game at E3 1997. The team worked several long nights and slept in a cardboard fort (named "Fort Nox") in the office to prepare the trailer. A thief stole the developers' laptop at the Dallas airport, requiring Ion Storm to upload a new demo for the conference. Hall continued writing and designing; he invented the Brebulan language by creating several phonemes and glyphs of the letter 8 turned on its side. Ben Herrera completed several sketches of characters and worlds by August 1997, and the team hoped to achieve full engine functionality by September 2, Hall's birthday. The game would suffer serious delays in its production. Eidos regularly sent producer James Poole to Dallas to check progress. After Ion Storm exhausted the initial $13 million provided for Daikatana and Anachronox, Eidos purchased a controlling stake in the company to install John Kavanagh as President in hopes of speeding development; monthly expenditures meanwhile rose to $1.2 million. Ion Storm solicited feedback from fans after demonstrating progress on Anachronox at E3 1998, and assured inclusion of a multiplayer mode. Tom Hall touted, "It is going to be very cinematic and about as non-linear as you can get. Some levels will be bigger than anything ever seen in a 3-D environment. We are really pushing the engine for this, with loads of textures." Developers made two demonstrations; the second featured lasers, lens flare, and volumetric fog. The gaming press received Anachronox well; one reporter wrote the game was "stunningly beautiful...[with] some of the most superb effects ever seen in a computer game, including rippling water, stunning laser lights and shadow effects". Another wrote that the game would be "graphically spectacular, with detailed characters". Panelists at E3 nominated Anachronox in the "Most Promising Game" and "Best RPG" categories for the Game Critics Awards. Ion Storm planned for a 1999 release, and unveiled new screenshots at the 1998 European Computer Trade Show. Among the game's maps developed in 1998 were Hephaestus (polished by David Namaksy); Whitendon (Iikka Keränen); Democratus, "Matrix 0", and certain interiors of Anachronox (Larry Herring); and the city of Limbus (Rich Carlson). Lead programmer Joey Liaw left Ion Storm to attend Stanford University in mid-1998. That November, several developers at Ion Storm departed to form their own company; among them was David Namaksy, lead level designer for Anachronox. Leaked e-mails evidencing leadership struggles at Ion Storm the following January eroded morale among the remaining team. As of January 1999, Ion Storm CEO Todd Porter expected the game to ship 2.5 million copies. Ion Storm decided to produce a sequel for Anachronox around early 1999, feeling there would otherwise be too much content for one game, requiring prohibitive costs and delays. Team member Brian Eiserloh noted that several art assets had already been created for the sequel. By May 1999, the team had settled on a cast of 450 non-player characters, and planned for a late 1999 or early 2000 release date. Ion Storm launched the Anachronox website in early 1999 with a movie-style trailer. Tom Hall featured four Anachronox non-player characters in his online tongue-in-cheek spoof of Kasparov versus the World. Among the game's maps completed in 1999 were the Bricks slums of Anachronox (Seneca Menard), Ballotine (Josh Jay), Sender Station (Lee Dotson), others parts of Democratus (Matt Sophos), the Casinox area of Anachronox (Brian Patenaude), and the junkyard maze of Anachronox. Tom Hall reported in 1999 that an option was being developed to remove adult themes, later manifested as an option to turn off profanity. Ion Storm demonstrated the game at E3 1999; the team drove an RV to the event, which suffered a blowout and electrical failure. Computer Games Magazine afterward commented that Anachronox had "wider roots than a Banyan grove and more promise per square byte than a CD collection of political speeches." Hall personally invented and scripted Boots's erotic dancing mini-game. He noted, "we're not above degrading our main character." Ion Storm showed off the mini-game at E3 2000, drawing humored reactions. Art director Lee Perry noted in March 2000 that perfecting the battle system was the biggest remaining hurdle for release. Ion Storm promoted a fall 2000 release date in May, and IGN reported in July that a Dreamcast port of Anachronox was planned for production after the PC version's release. Ion Storm issued a clarification that they were only considering a Dreamcast port. The team finished the game's control setup in August. Ion Storm loaned staff to the team of Daikatana to speed its release in summer 2000. Though losing money, Eidos allowed development of Anachronox to continue due their high esteem of Tom Hall, as well as a desire not to punish the game's team for the delays resulting from assisting Daikatana. Eidos maintained no expectations of profit, and merely hoped Anachronox would recoup its budget. The team began working six-day weeks by late 2000. By 2001, the team was working 12- to 16-hour days and 6- to 7-day weeks. Hall described weekly bug meetings before release: "you see 100 bugs at the start of the week, fix the 80 you can replicate, and then meet the next Monday to address the 200 bugs they found, fix the 160 you can replicate, then meet to discuss the 400 they found...the time in-between is scary. Usually, the programmers find the bug, then stumble out of their cube, 'we were SO lucky to find that' or 'how did that EVER work?' It's like some bizarre divination method that no one is quite sure how it finds things, but no one wants to 'disturb the mojo'." Several Internet rumors that Ion Storm would soon close spread in May 2001. By June 2001, all dialogue had been recorded and Ion Storm was working on balancing, playtesting, and adjusting gameplay; release was set for the next month. Anachronox went gold and shipped to manufacturers in late June. ### Release and patches Anachronox was released on June 27, 2001, in North America, July 6 in the United Kingdom, and July 31 in Australia. PC Gamer packaged a game demo of Anachronox with its 100th issue. The Canberra Times staged a giveaway of three game copies to coincide with its release in Oceania. By the end of 2001, sales of Anachronox in North America had reached 20,480 units, according to PC Data. Vice later estimated sales four months after initial launch at 40,000 units. The game was rereleased in Oceania as a budget title in 2004. Team member Lucas Davis compiled the development tools and documentation for Anachronox and released them in August 2001. Four bug-fixing patches exist for Anachronox. Ion Storm created the first (1.01), which fixes a buffer overrun crash occurring especially under Windows 2000. Ion Storm released the first patch (1.01) on July 2, 2001, shortly before its offices were shuttered. Joey Liaw set up a GeoCities website for reporting bugs and technical information after the game's release, and worked on a new patch in his spare time. The second patch (1.02, or build 44) was released in May 2003. This patch overhauls the save-game system, adds taxi-cabs between distant points in the Bricks and provides important stability fixes. It was followed by another patch by Joey Liaw, version 1.02 (build 45), released September 2003. In April 2004, a fan-made unofficial patch got released (version 1.02 (build 46) which fixes most of the remaining bugs. Fans have translated the game into German and released a conversion patch. Level designer Rich Carlson released a scrapped secret level for Anachronox in February 2004 after finding it on an old floppy disk. ## Reception Anachronox earned positive reviews from critics. The Daily Telegraph called it the most original game Ion Storm had produced, while The Scotsman's reviewer appreciated its "many original touches". PC Gamer featured Anachronox four times in its top 100 PC games lists: \#16 (2007), \#17 (2008), \#61 (2010), & \#76 (2015). It was also USA Today'''s Game of the Week. Writer Jeff Green lamented that Ion Storm had shut down after Anachronox; he called it "easily the best console-style RPG ever made for the PC." Reviewers highlighted the gameplay style, branded an unusual mix between role-playing video games and PC first-person shooters. Some compared it to the Final Fantasy series and Deus Ex. The Evening Standard wrote, "Anachronox swaps puzzlement for humour while keeping the character interaction, deep storyline and strategic battles that make the Japanese games so good." Computer Gaming World felt the game "incorporates the best elements of the adventure and role-playing genres." In contrast, Next Generation felt the genre-blending resulted in generic gameplay at times. Lyndon Russell of the Herald Sun praised the basic mechanics, though he found the combat predictable. Erik Wolpaw praised the battle system's unique focus on movement, but wished characters could wait for a turn rather than perform an action. The puzzle elements, such as those brought by Fatima, were well-received, even considered "indispensable". The game's aesthetics were strongly praised. One reviewer appreciated the variety of styles in the music; it has been compared to Yanni, Enya, John Tesh, and sci-fi scores. Alan Dang contrarily found the music at times "neutral" and generic; Paul Ward found it pleasant but sparse. Numerous critics praised the voice acting and dialogue. The game's cinematic cutscenes were also acclaimed; Computer and Video Games noted they were "superbly used for laughs or to create a real sense of dramatic tension", while Next Generation wrote that Anachronox would be remembered as the germination point for blending interactive gaming and cinema. The Guardian, while also giving praise, found them somewhat predictable. Several reviewers praised the field map and level design of all but the last levels. Earlier ones were said to contain many "little details that bring the game to life" and significant immersion. The later levels were less well received, with one reviewer suspecting that Ion Storm ran out of time to polish the game, as some end-game locations were "hideously ugly, with huge slab-like polygons, dodgy backdrops and pixelated low resolution textures". The Guardian felt the lighting was too dark in general, while Kevin Cheung of The Sydney Morning Herald found the graphics blocky. Reviewers hailed the story, characters, setting, and dialogue of Anachronox, citing its science fiction themes and offbeat, quirky humor. The Advertiser summarized the plot as "a beefy storyline loaded with strong characters, powerful dialogue, outrageous humour, seemingly endless surprises and a wild ride around the galaxy." Elliott Chin singled out the game's humor, which, while divisive of Computer Gaming World's staff at first, won it the publication's "Best Use of Humor" 2001 award. Even apart from humor, the dialogue was acclaimed as "so clever, it almost distracts from the game play" and as "very natural and colloquial". David Gordon of The Independent enjoyed the game for its "dark and ominous" plot and setting, centered on the quest to stop the destruction of the universe. The setting was compared to Blade Runner, film noir, The Matrix, Total Recall and the Dark City franchise. Reviewers enjoyed the game's odd characters and how the team of "has-beens and rejects" brought new life to the genre, particularly by averting the coming-of-age cliché. Sly was well-received, described as a "typical downtrodden B-movie private eye", a "Mickey Spillane-style hero" in a cyberpunk setting, and a "space-age Sam Spade". Several critics complained about the game's slow start on the planet Anachronox, especially its elevator-riding scenes. Reviewer Elliott Chin disagreed, evoking "a superb sense of timing, starting out small and slowly building to the main event", while David Phelan stated that strong character writing would encourage gamers to play beyond the "pedestrian-paced" opening scenes. Several critics took issue with the game's graphics and outdated Quake II engine; reviewer Stephen Hunt named the game "a muddy affair" due to the "elderly" engine. Some reviewers, however, felt the game's charm made the engine's age irrelevant. Reviewers also encountered several software bugs and glitches, among them incompatibility with Windows 2000 and a bug forcing the player to repeat a sequence near the end several times. However, they differed in their opinions of the game as a result of them, ranging from "nearly unplayable" to "a flawed classic." Reviewers also criticized the game's restricted display resolution choices; players could only choose from two options at polar ends of hardware requirements. ## Legacy Before releasing Anachronox, Ion Storm retextured characters and adapted sequences from the game for Shiner, a production by the Undermain Theatre. Scenes from the game were used to illustrate the vivid imagination and struggles of a paralyzed woman named Xela. Anachronox references the films Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink through street addresses on planet Anachronox; Tom Hall had studied acting at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and volunteered as an usher for Undermain. Though received well, the game did not prevent the closure of Ion Storm's Dallas office in July 2001; John Romero and Tom Hall departed after its release. The game became "semi-obscure"; Tom Hall explained: "Millions were spent making it, and upon release, $50,000 (\~$ in ) advertising it." He reflected on the game in 2007: > [It was] hubris to take 15 people and say you're going to make a console-style RPG, but, well, that's what we did. It wasn't insanely buggy compared to some titles, but it was rushed out the door. Eidos wanted to ship it. If we'd shipped Joey [Liaw]'s final build, it would have been very stable... I think most people didn't know the game was out. I sing the praises of Eidos for sticking with us through all the craziness—they were amazing. But they spent millions on the game, and in the tens of thousands on advertising. I think it could have found a pretty strong audience. But with all the craziness that had gone on, I feel fortunate that people got to experience it at all... People still write to me saying they found a copy, that they played and loved the game, and that they wished they'd heard about it coming out at the time. Vice published a 2021 retrospective on the development of Anachronox, with the development team fondly remembering Hall's leadership. Vice concluded that Anachronox was an "unqualified success", writing that Tom Hall successfully translated the 2D console JRPG experience into a 3D PC game whose adult themes, varied gameplay, and unique dialogue fully realized his "ridiculously ambitious" vision. Hall later reflected, "There are many sadder stories than this one...we got our games out." ### Machinima film Cinematic director Jake Hughes independently combined the game's cut-scenes into a two-and-a-half-hour film titled Anachronox: The Movie, released as 13 MPEG files on Machinima.com. The work was considered machinima's first feature-length production (incorrectly: the longer film The Seal of Nehahra predates it) and one of its most ambitious projects. Judges at the 2002 Machinima Film Festival (MFF) awarded it Best Picture, Best Writing, and Best Technical Achievement. Machinima.com's editors said of the film, "Anachronox: The Movie is a tour de force, one of the finest Machinima films produced to date, and probably the most accomplished Machinima feature to date. Hell, it managed to hold two overworked jury members in a room for two and a half hours before the MFF 2002—what more can we say?" As of 2003, Machinima.com planned to release the film on DVD with extra footage and artwork. In 2006, the DVD images got distributed via BitTorrent. ### Sequel Tom Hall felt the story of Anachronox was too large for one game (requiring an estimated 70 hours of gameplay), and planned for two expansion packs in 1998. Each expansion pack would represent another third of the overall story. He confirmed in 1999 that Anachronox would be followed by only one sequel; several art assets had already been created for the sequel by mid-2000. Hall speculated in 2000 that further adventures in two new universes may take place after the sequel. Ion Storm's closure nixed plans for a continuation; Hall has unsuccessfully tried to purchase the intellectual property rights to the Anachronox universe. He later stated that he did not regret ending Anachronox on a cliffhanger, as most characters had resolved their inner turmoil. Hall noted in 2007 that other team members were willing to come back to help: "We went through such turmoil but stayed for the love of the universe, the game and each other. Former team members often mention that if I ever got the intellectual property back and was going to make Anachronox 2, just tell them when and where. We have, as we say, 'The Love.'" Hall remarked in 2010, "If I don't do the game in the next 10 years, I'll just write up the rest of the story and put it on my website for closure, how about that?". On February 17, 2015, Square Enix announced that it will allow developers to create games based on some of their old Eidos IPs via the Square Enix Collective project, including the Anachronox'' IP.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

2008 video game

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a 2008 crossover fighting game developed by Sora Ltd. and Game Arts and published by Nintendo for the Wii. The third installment in the Super Smash Bros. series, it was announced at a pre-E3 2005 press conference by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. Masahiro Sakurai, director of the previous two games in the series, assumed the role of director at Iwata's request. Game development began in October 2005 with a creative team that included members from several Nintendo and third-party development teams. After delays due to development problems, the game was released worldwide in 2008. The number of playable characters in Brawl has grown from that in Super Smash Bros. Melee, although some characters from Melee were cut in the game. Brawl is the first game in the series to have playable third-party characters. Like that of its predecessors, the objective of Brawl is to knock opponents off the screen. It is a departure from traditional fighting games, notably in its simplified move commands and emphasis on ring outs over knockouts. It includes a more extensive single-player mode than its predecessors, known as "The Subspace Emissary". This mode is a plot-driven and side-scrolling beat 'em up featuring computer-generated cutscenes. Brawl supports multiplayer battles with up to four combatants and is the first game of its franchise to feature online battles via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. The game is unique in that it can be played with four different controllers, including the Wii Remote, Wii Remote with Nunchuk, GameCube controller, and Classic Controller, simultaneously. Super Smash Bros. Brawl received universal acclaim, with praise centered on its entertainment value despite issues relating to its content loading times. Its musical score, composed through a collaboration of 38 renowned video game composers, was lauded for its representation of different generations in gaming history. Brawl was named the "Fighting Game of the Year" by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. In 2010, the game was included as one of the titles in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die, and is also considered to be one of the best video games ever made. As of 2023, it is the eighth best-selling Wii game of all time, with over thirteen million copies sold worldwide. It was followed by Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U in 2014. ## Gameplay Following its predecessors, Brawl is a platform fighter that uses a battle system unlike that of typical fighting games. Players can choose from a large selection of characters, each attempting to knock their opponents off the screen as they fight on various stages. The characters in Brawl include most of the same ones as the predecessors, such as Mario and Pikachu. Instead of using traditional health bars that start at a maximum value and lose value, Brawl characters start the game with 0%; the value rises as they take damage, to a maximum of 999%. As a character's percentage increases, the character flies further back when hit. When a character is knocked beyond a stage's boundary and disappears from the screen, the character loses either a life, a point, or coins, depending on the mode of play. Brawl includes a function which allows players to create profiles with personalized button configurations for each control method along with their chosen username. The characters in Brawl fight using a variety of attacks, that give the player a wider selection than the predecessors. Players execute each move by pressing a button in conjunction with a tilt of the control stick or a press of the D-pad, depending on the mode of control. In addition to basic attacks, characters have access to more powerful moves, known as smash attacks. Each character has four unique moves, which often cause effects besides damage to an opponent. Brawl introduces character-specific super attacks, referred to as "Final Smashes". Significantly more powerful than regular attacks, these moves have a wide variety of effects that range from nearly unavoidable blasts to temporary transformations. Final Smash moves can be performed by destroying a Smash Ball: a colorful floating orb bearing the Smash Bros. logo. Characters can use items ranging from projectiles to melee weapons; each has a different effect on the characters around it. Although many items have returned from previous Super Smash Bros. games, new ones have been introduced as well. Some returning items have changed appearance and function. Two varieties of items, Assist Trophies and Poké Balls, temporarily summon guest characters and Pokémon, respectively, that generally aid the summoner. They cannot be controlled by players and are usually invincible. ### Stages Brawl's stages are generally based on plot devices from the various game series of Super Smash Bros. Stages range from floating platforms to moving areas where the characters must stay within the field of play. Each stage has a boundary that cannot be passed, or the character will be "KO'd", thus losing a life or "point", depending on the mode of play. Brawl contains 41 selectable stages, 29 of which are initially available. Many stages undergo elaborate changes while battles take place, such as a cycling day-to-night system or changing seasons. A stage, based on the Animal Crossing series, features a live events system in which special events may occur depending on the date and time. Environmental gameplay mechanics are featured in this installment, such as destructible terrain and the ability to float. Unlike its predecessors, Brawl includes stages based on third-party games such as the Metal Gear Solid-inspired Shadow Moses Island. The game also includes 10 stages taken from its predecessor, Super Smash Bros. Melee. Brawl allows players to create their own stages in a mode called Stage Builder, the first in the series to implement this mode. Players can save their stages to an SD card or to the internal memory of the Wii console. Through Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, players can submit their creations to their friends, or to Nintendo to receive a daily stage from the service. ### Multiplayer In addition to the standard multiplayer mode, Brawl features other multiplayer modes and options in Group mode. Special Melee, from the previous game, returns as Special Brawl. In this mode, players are able to battle in matches using special rules for a greater level of customization. Whereas previously standard options such as "Giant Melee" or "Invisible Melee" were limited to one feature per match, players may now select multiple options for a single match. Another returning game type, Tourney mode (formerly Tournament mode), enables players to create an elimination-based tournament, where up to 32 players can play, with a large number of game-controlled or human-controlled opponents. A "Rotation" feature has been introduced in Brawl, which allows up to sixteen players to compete in sequence by switching out winners or losers after each round. ### Single-player Like its predecessors, Super Smash Bros. Brawl includes various modes of play from the previous game designed for a single player. In Classic Mode, players fight individual characters in a selected order. Each match features an arena or opponent from a particular series, such as The Legend of Zelda or Pokémon. Several matches have a unique battle condition, such as a metal opponent, large opponent, or a two-on-two team battle. Similar to Classic mode are All Star Mode and Boss Battles, where the player has only one life to defeat all of the playable characters and bosses respectively. Brawl features Events, matches with predetermined battle conditions such as defeating opponents within a time limit or reaching a specific goal. New to single-player mode, each of the 41 Events has three difficulty levels, with a distinct high score recorded for each. In addition to the normal set of 41 Events played with a single player, a smaller set of 21 two-player Events is included. Stadium mode is a collection of objective-oriented minigames. Returning from the two previous games is the "Target Smash\!" minigame, in which the player must break ten targets as quickly as possible. In the Home-Run Contest, the player must beat Sandbag to inflict as much damage as possible in 10 seconds, then strike it with a Home-Run Bat. Updated from Melee, all Stadium mode minigames feature cooperative or competitive multiplayer. #### Adventure Mode: The Subspace Emissary Super Smash Bros. Brawl features a new Adventure mode titled "The Subspace Emissary", abbreviated to "SSE". This mode features a unique storyline and numerous side-scrolling levels and bosses, as well as cutscenes explaining the plot. The mode introduces a group of antagonists called the Subspace Army, led by the Ancient Minister. Some of these enemies appeared in previous Nintendo video games, such as Petey Piranha from the Mario franchise and a squadron of R.O.B.s based on classic Nintendo hardware. The Subspace Army boasts a number of original enemies, such as the Roader, a robotic unicycle; the Bytan, a one-eyed spherical creature which can replicate itself if left alone; and the Primid, enemies that fight with a variety of weapons. Though the game is primarily played as a single-player mode, cooperative multiplayer is available. The SSE features a mechanism which strengthens a character's abilities in the form of collectible stickers which can be applied to the player's Trophies. Unlike other game modes, the SSE has a team system for the characters, with a limited choice of characters at the beginning of the mode. Others join the team as the game progresses, while some characters may leave the team temporarily. Most characters start off with their own teams, but the teams merge occasionally until they become a unified team by the end of the game. In cooperative multiplayer, once one player loses a life, an ally can take his or her place until the number of lives run out. If there are no lives left and player one is defeated, the game is interrupted, with the choice of quitting or starting again from the previous "door" the player passed through. During the development of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Sakurai said that this mode would be more "fleshed out" than the single-player modes in previous Smash Bros. titles. Shigeru Miyamoto has explained that Sakurai always wanted to have a deep single-player game, but he wanted Sakurai to focus more on the multiplayer aspects in the previous titles since there were already many single-player games of this kind. Both were possible with the development time allotted for Brawl. Sakurai selected Kazushige Nojima, a scenario writer known for his work on the Final Fantasy series, to construct a plotline for the mode in cooperation with him. ### Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Brawl allows players to play against distant opponents via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Online multiplayer games can be played either with registered friends or with randomly selected participants. Additionally, players can converse with up to four phrases that are preset by the player, which appear as speech bubbles when activated. These names and phrases are not displayed in random-player matches. The Spectator mode allows players to watch matches being played between other players, and bet on the outcome using coins earned within the game. The winner of the match earns a jackpot of coins. Snapshots may be taken during battles or in certain other modes, which can later be sent to friends or submitted to Nintendo. Video replay footage can be captured in specific game modes, including Brawl and Target Smash\! modes, and sent to friends in the same manner. Snapshots, custom stages and replays can be submitted to Nintendo's "Smash Service" for a chance to get the content featured and updated on all Smash Service-enabled Wii consoles. Since Brawl's launch, the Smash Service has updated the game's Vault with one user submitted snapshot, custom stage and replay data chosen by Nintendo every day; each new update overwrites the previous. The user can choose to not receive updates from the service through the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection options menu. After June 30, 2009, the Smash Service stopped accepting content from its users. After May 20, 2014, the Nintendo Wi-Fi service for Brawl was discontinued. ### Vault Returning from Melee are trophies, statues of video game characters and objects that give brief histories or descriptions of their subjects, such as Mario and Link, or other characters and items that appear in their respective series. A minigame, the Coin Launcher, replaces the lottery machine from Melee as the primary method of obtaining trophies. The Coin Launcher is a machine that uses coins as projectiles to shoot trophies and counter incoming dangers. Coins can also be used to bet on the victor of online battles via Spectator mode. Trophies unavailable in Coin Launcher mode are obtained by using an item called the Trophy Stand on weakened enemy characters and bosses within The Subspace Emissary. Trophies obtained in this manner may contain information on the backstory of the Subspace Emissary. In addition to trophies, players can now collect stickers of video game artwork. Players can place stickers and trophies onto virtual backgrounds and take snapshots, which can be sent to other players via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Stickers can be applied to characters to power up their abilities in the Subspace Emissary. Other stickers or trophies which cannot be collected through the Coin Launcher minigame, Subspace Emissary, or Vs. matches can be unlocked from the Challenges menu, an interactive display which catalogs unlocked features and items in gridded windows. Once a window has been broken and its contents are unlocked, horizontally adjacent windows display the conditions necessary to unlock them. Brawl contains demo versions of several Nintendo games, named "Masterpieces", which were originally released for older consoles and feature characters playable in Brawl. These games use Virtual Console technology to emulate older hardware and have time constraints ranging from thirty seconds to five minutes. Some use save data to allow the player to play a certain scenario or level. Along with Masterpieces comes the inclusion of the Chronicles section, a library of previous Nintendo games which lists games either previously made or published by Nintendo on all of its consoles. New games appear when certain characters, trophies or stickers related to the game are unlocked. ## Plot In the Adventure mode titled "The Subspace Emissary", Mario and Kirby face each other on a stadium located in the Super Smash Bros. universe. In this world, when a fighter is defeated, they become an inanimate trophy-like object, but they can be returned to their animate forms when the object's stand is touched by an active fighter. Suddenly, the Halberd appears, releasing a stream of purple snowflake-like particles known as Shadow Bugs that form the soldiers of an evil force known as the Subspace Army. The Ancient Minister, the army's cloaked general, arrives and detonates a Subspace Bomb, which can only be activated by the sacrifice of a pair of R.O.B. units, and transports the stadium into Subspace, an alternate dimension where the Subspace Army resides. The army's advance prompts the fighters to join forces and attempt to repel the threat, while its pawns, villain fighters Bowser and Wario, attempt to deter the allied fighters by using powerful raygun-like weapons that instantly reduce them to their trophy forms, with the former using the Shadow Bugs on some of them to create evil doppelgängers. King Dedede begins independently gathering some fallen fighters, placing golden brooches on them. The Ancient Minister is revealed as a subordinate of Ganondorf, who is under orders from Master Hand to draw the world into Subspace, but is secretly plotting a coup d'état against him for command over the Subspace Army. Wario, who had kidnapped Ness, is defeated by Lucas, aided by the Pokémon Trainer, and his trophy form is later helplessly sucked into a Subspace Bomb's detonation. Meanwhile, Meta Knight leaves his group to reclaim the Halberd as he allies with Lucario and Snake and neutralizes the source of the Shadow Bugs – Mr. Game & Watch. The Ancient Minister's true identity is revealed to be that of the leading R.O.B. unit, who rebels against Ganondorf to join the fighters when the latter detonates several bombs on its home, the Isle of the Ancients, to create a rift into Subspace large enough to summon the Subspace Army's ultimate weapon – an enormous warship. The three major groups converge and use the reclaimed Halberd to combat the ship. Although the Halberd is destroyed, the fighters escape unscathed and Ganondorf and Bowser retreat after Kirby destroys the ship with his Dragoon. After betraying Bowser as he is about to put his coup in motion, Ganondorf discovers that Master Hand was being controlled by the embodiment of Subspace and the mastermind behind the Subspace Army, Tabuu, who defeats Ganondorf and the freed Master Hand. The fighters confront Tabuu, but the latter annihilates them all with a cataclysmic attack known as "Off Waves" and scatters their trophy forms all throughout his dimension. Dedede's brooches are soon revealed to be a fail-safe against Tabuu and independently revive Luigi, Ness and later Kirby, who, with the former two reviving Dedede in return, rescue the fighters and navigate a gargantuan maze-like amalgamation of the areas that were transported into Subspace where Tabuu is located. When Tabuu attempts to dispose of the fighters once and for all, he is attacked by Sonic, who negates his Off Waves; the fighters then defeat Tabuu and save the day. In a freeze frame-styled epilogue, the fighters look at a great luminous cross on the horizon where the Isle of the Ancients once resided, which is implied to have now been erased from existence due to the excessive amount of the Subspace Bombs that had been detonated there. ## Playable characters Brawl allows the player to select from 39 playable characters, 25 of which are initially available from the start. Some are new, but others return from Melee—in some cases updated or refined, either in appearance, fighting capabilities, or both. For example, Link and Fox have adopted designs from more recent titles at the time, while Samus has gained the ability to change into Zero Suit Samus. Dr. Mario, Roy, Young Link, Mewtwo and Pichu are the first five characters to not return from a previous game. Some previously represented series have had more characters added to Brawl. Diddy Kong from the Donkey Kong series, Ike from the Fire Emblem series, and Lucas from Mother 3 make their first appearance in the Smash Bros. series. Other newcomers are the first to represent their series. These include characters such as Pit, representing the Kid Icarus series for the first time since the 1991 Game Boy game Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, Olimar of the Pikmin series, and Wario, as he appears in Nintendo's WarioWare. Solid Snake, the protagonist of Konami's Metal Gear franchise, and Sonic the Hedgehog from Nintendo's former rival Sega are the first third-party characters to appear in a Super Smash Bros. game. ## Development At a pre-E3 2005 press conference on May 17, 2005, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced that the next installment of Super Smash Bros. was soon to be in development for its next console and would be a launch title with Wi-Fi compatibility for online play. The announcement was a surprise to Sakurai, who left HAL Laboratory in 2003. He was not informed of Nintendo's intent to release another Smash Bros. game, despite the fact that Iwata told Sakurai shortly after his resignation from HAL that if a new Smash game were developed, he would want Sakurai to again serve as director. It was not until the day after the conference that Iwata requested that Sakurai hold a private meeting with him, where he was asked to be involved as Brawl's director. Sakurai agreed to become director, and development of the game began in October 2005, when Nintendo opened a new office in Tokyo just for its production. Help from a variety of studios such as Monolith Soft and Paon was enlisted, with Game Arts as the main team in the preliminary development stages. In addition, several Smash Bros. staff members that resided in the area of the new office joined the project. Altogether, roughly 100 individuals worked on the project full-time, and were given access to all the original material and tools from the development of Melee, courtesy of HAL Laboratory. The game was absent from Nintendo's Wii showing at its pre-E3 2006 press conference. Nintendo officially revealed the game under the name of Super Smash Bros. Brawl the next day, May 10, 2006, along with the game's first official trailer during the E3 After-Hours Press Conference. In an interview with IGN, Sakurai said the Wii's motion sensing features might not be included because "[his team] found that trying to implement too much motion-sensory functionality can get in the way of the game". As far as Wi-Fi play is concerned, Sakurai stated his plan was to include Wi-Fi connection compatibility from the start. He goes on to say, "One of the primary reasons Super Smash Bros. Brawl was created was that Nintendo, when taking Wii online, wanted to have Smash Bros. to do that." However, Sakurai stated on the Japanese version of the Smash Bros. website that there were "hurdles of all sorts that [made] it very difficult" to implement online battles. Furthermore, he said that an online ranking system is unlikely to be implemented. During a test play between Sakurai and Hideo Kojima, Kojima stated that the game felt complete and that Nintendo "could put it out now and it would sell millions of copies". Starting May 22, 2007 and ending April 14, 2008, the game's official site had daily weekday updates, revealing characters, stages, items, music and more. At the Nintendo Media Conference at E3 2007, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé announced that Super Smash Bros. Brawl would be released on December 3, 2007, in the Americas. However, just two months before its anticipated December release, the development team asked for more time to work on the game. During the Nintendo Conference on October 10, 2007, President Iwata announced the delay, > In order to fine-tune Smash Bros., with this unprecedented game depth, we have decided that we have to take a little more time to complete the game than we announced before. We are sorry for the fans that are already anxiously waiting for the launch, but we would like to launch this game on January 24, 2008 in Japan. As for the North American launch, we will review that too, and our local subsidiaries will make their own announcements. On October 11, 2007, George Harrison of Nintendo of America stated that Super Smash Bros. Brawl would be released on February 10, 2008, in North America. On January 15, 2008, the game's release was delayed one week in Japan to January 31 and nearly a month in the Americas to March 9. On April 24, 2008, Nintendo of Europe confirmed that Brawl would be released in Europe on June 27. Similarly, Nintendo Australia announced on May 15, 2008, that the game would be released in that region on June 26, 2008. ### Technical issues Super Smash Bros. Brawl uses a dual-layer disc due to the size of the game data. Nintendo of America has stated that some Wii consoles may have difficulty reading the high-density software due to a contaminated laser lens. Nintendo offered a free repair for owners who experienced this issue. ### Music Sakurai revealed a list of 36 musicians providing musical arrangements for the game on May 22, 2007. He asked composers such as Koji Kondo, Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoko Shimomura, and Yuzo Koshiro, amongst many others, to listen to a selection of Nintendo and other game music and arrange their favorites. The game's various stages have multiple musical tracks which players can listen to using the new "My Music" feature, including some pieces taken directly from other games without any modification or special arrangements. This feature allows the player to select how often a piece gets played during a stage. Some of the pieces need to be unlocked by collecting CDs which are awarded via the game's Challenges Mode, or by spawning randomly while playing. The game's original music was composed by Takahiro Nishi, Shogo Sakai, Masaaki Iwasaki, Yutaka Iraha, Keigo Ozaki, and Kentaro Ishizaka, while the main theme was composed by former Final Fantasy series composer, Nobuo Uematsu, and arranged by Sakai. The main theme has Latin lyrics that allude to various key aspects of the game, including fighting for glory, rivals becoming companions, and the fame of the characters. ### Inclusion of characters Sakurai originally stated that he did not want to emphasize Japan-only characters. However, reflecting upon Marth and Roy's inclusion in Melee, which led to the international release of the Fire Emblem series, he became more interested in characters exclusive to Japan-only releases. Sakurai said that third-party characters would amount to two at the most, aside from Snake. The inclusion of Konami-created character Solid Snake may seem to conflict with the Super Smash Bros. paradigm—to only include characters from games made by Nintendo and its second parties—but Sakurai said that the creator of Metal Gear Hideo Kojima "practically begged" him to include Solid Snake in Melee, which was not feasible as development was too far in for the game. This in turn led to his appearance in the following game instead. Additionally, Lucas from Mother 3 was supposed to be added in Melee, but was excluded due to the constant delay and ultimate cancellation of Mother 3 of the Nintendo 64. Japanese fans were asked to submit their desired characters and musical themes via a forum on the game's official Japanese site for possible inclusion. The most requested third-party character, Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog, was announced to be in Brawl on October 10, 2007. Sonic series co-creator Yuji Naka asked for Sonic to be included in Melee, but Sonic could not be implemented because of time constraints. During Brawl'''s development, Sakurai revealed that he initially considered adding Miis as playable fighters. However, due to concerns that the Miis would not be interesting enough characters and that they could be used for online bullying, Sakurai had to decide against it. Miis would later be integrated into the series as playable characters in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. ## Reception Super Smash Bros. Brawl has received universal acclaim and has been commercially successful worldwide. In the United States, the game sold 874,000 units on launch day and 1.4 million units in its first week to become the fastest-selling Nintendo video game in America's history, according to Nintendo. According to the NPD Group, it was the best-selling game of March 2008 in Canada and the United States, selling 200,000 and 2.7 million units, respectively; it was the best-selling game of 2008 in Canada. The game generated $122 million in revenue in March 2008. Electronic Entertainment Design and Research analyst, Jesse Divnich, attributed the game's strong US sales to its fulfilling "the needs of the casual, social, and sub-13-year-old markets". Upon release in PAL regions, Brawl reached number one on both European and Australian sales charts. According to the NPD Group, GfK Chart-Track, and Enterbrain, by August 2008, the game had sold 3.539 million units in the United States, 213,000 in the United Kingdom, and 1.681 million in Japan, respectively, for a total of 5.433 million units. It ultimately received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom. It was also the fifth best-selling game of Japan in 2008, selling 1,747,113 copies. It was the fourth best-selling game of 2008 in the United States, selling over 4.17 million copies. By March 31, 2020, the game had sold 13.32 million units worldwide, according to Nintendo. The editors of Japanese game magazine Famitsu, who awarded it a perfect score, praised the variety and depth of the single-player content, the unpredictability of Final Smashes, and the dynamic fighting styles of the characters. Chris Slate of Nintendo Power awarded Brawl a perfect score in the March 2008 issue, calling it "one of the very best games that Nintendo has ever produced". GameSpot editor Lark Anderson noted that Brawl's "simple controls and gameplay make it remarkably accessible to beginners, yet still appealing to veterans", while GameTrailers mentioned the amount of content that gives the game "staying power that few other games possess". Eurogamer praised the game's ability to stay fun in both single-player and multiplayer modes, while "fulfilling its usual role of dominating a willing crowd's evening into the early hours, and now allowing you to sustain that after everyone's gone home". Game Revolution hailed Brawl's soundtrack as "spectacular ... spanning a generous swath of gaming history". Game Informer highlighted Brawl's "finely tuned balance, core fighting mechanics, and local multiplayer modes". Edge concluded that, while the Smash Bros. games have often been "derided as button-mashing", Brawl features "one of the most enduringly innovative and deep systems of any fighter". IGN editor Matt Casamassina, however, noted that, although Brawl is "completely engrossing and wholly entertaining", it suffers from "long loading times" and "uninspired enemies and locales" in the Subspace Emissary adventure mode. He also described the graphics as "an enhanced version of Melee", with backgrounds that lack detail in areas. GameSpy echoed this by equating the quality of the graphics to that of the GameCube. Mitchell Saltzman of Gameworld Network expressed disappointment at the lack of "stat tracking, voice chat, and a mostly lag free environment" in the online mode. NGamer's Matthew Castle points to the franchise's lack of innovation with the verdict, "Smash Bros risks growing too familiar. It never breeds contempt, but it doesn't quite muster that Galaxy magic." Jeff Gerstmann rated the game 4 out of 5 stars on Giant Bomb, saying that players who are not into Nintendo's history or multiplayer "probably won't understand what all the fuss is about in the first place". 1UP.com, however, suggested that Brawl is not directed exclusively towards serious gamers, as it offers "a curious diversion for uninterested gamers" as well. ### Awards Super Smash Bros. Brawl won multiple Wii-specific awards from IGN in IGN's 2008 video game awards, including "Best Fighting Game", "Best Local Multiplayer Game" and "Best Original Score". It was also nominated by them for several other Wii-specific awards, including "Best Graphics Technology", "Best Use of Sound", "Best Online Multiplayer Game" and "Game of the Year". The game also won "Best Fighting Game" in GameSpot's Game of the Year awards 2008. During the 12th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded Super Smash Bros. Brawl with "Fighting Game of the Year". The game placed 15th in Official Nintendo Magazine's 100 greatest Nintendo games of all time. Brawl was ranked by Nintendo Power as the fifth best game of the 2000s released on a Nintendo system. ## Legacy Brawl is unusually moddable for a console game, due to the "Smash Stack" exploit found within the game's built-in stage builder when loading stages from an SD card. Rather than stage data, a specialized program can be inserted onto the SD card that renders the builder unusable while present, but allows loading of fan-made patches from the card on top of the game's on-disc data. These patches range from simple character skins and balance adjustments to more complex modifications such as whole additional characters and extra stages more complex than the internal stage builder allows. In 2011, a team of competitive Super Smash Bros. players, known collectively as the Project M Back Room (PMBR), began development on a mod of Brawl titled Project M. The project was designed to retool Brawl to play more like its predecessor, Super Smash Bros. Melee, in response to complaints about Brawl's physics, slower-paced gameplay, use of chance elements, and mechanics of certain attacks compared to Melee. The mod rebalances each of Brawl's playable characters, adds new character costumes and gameplay modes, and adds the characters Mewtwo and Roy, who were present in Melee but omitted from Brawl's roster. The mod received praise from many reviewers and fans, and the "Version 3.0" demo had received over 300,000 downloads by February 2014. The project ceased development on December 1, 2015. In 2019, a new team of developers created Project+, described as a "spiritual successor" to Project M''.

Arnold Bax

English composer (1883–1953)

Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax KCVO (8 November 1883 – 3 October 1953) was an English composer, poet, and author. His prolific output includes songs, choral music, chamber pieces, and solo piano works, but he is best known for his orchestral music. In addition to a series of symphonic poems, he wrote seven symphonies and was for a time widely regarded as the leading British symphonist. Bax was born in the London suburb of Streatham to a prosperous family. He was encouraged by his parents to pursue a career in music, and his private income enabled him to follow his own path as a composer without regard for fashion or orthodoxy. Consequently, he came to be regarded in musical circles as an important but isolated figure. While still a student at the Royal Academy of Music Bax became fascinated with Ireland and Celtic culture, which became a strong influence on his early development. In the years before the First World War he lived in Ireland and became a member of Dublin literary circles, writing fiction and verse under the pseudonym Dermot O'Byrne. Later, he developed an affinity with Nordic culture, which for a time superseded his Celtic influences in the years after the First World War. Between 1910 and 1920 Bax wrote a large amount of music, including the symphonic poem Tintagel, his best-known work. During this period he formed a lifelong association with the pianist Harriet Cohen – at first an affair, then a friendship, and always a close professional relationship. In the 1920s he began the series of seven symphonies which form the heart of his orchestral output. In 1942 Bax was appointed Master of the King's Music, but composed little in that capacity. In his last years he found his music regarded as old-fashioned, and after his death it was generally neglected. From the 1960s onwards, mainly through a growing number of commercial recordings, his music was gradually rediscovered, although little of it is regularly heard in the concert hall. ## Life and career ### Early years Bax was born on 8 November 1883 in the London suburb of Streatham, Surrey, to a prosperous Victorian family. He was the eldest son of Alfred Ridley Bax (1844–1918) and his wife, Charlotte Ellen (1860–1940), daughter of Rev. William Knibb Lea, of Amoy, China. The couple's youngest son, Clifford Lea Bax, became a playwright and essayist. Alfred Bax was a barrister of the Middle Temple, but having a private income he did not practise. In 1896 the family moved to a mansion in Hampstead. Bax later wrote that although it would have been good to be raised in the country, the large gardens of the family house were the next best thing. He was a musical child: "I cannot remember the long-lost day when I was unable to play the piano – inaccurately". After a preparatory school in Balham, Bax attended the Hampstead Conservatoire during the 1890s. The establishment was run – "with considerable personal pomp", according to Bax – by Cecil Sharp, whose passion for English folk-song and folk-dance excited no response in his pupil. An enthusiasm for folk music was widespread among British composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Parry, Stanford, Vaughan Williams and Holst; Sullivan and Elgar stood aloof, as did Bax, who later put into general circulation the saying, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing." In 1900 Bax moved on to the Royal Academy of Music, where he remained until 1905, studying composition with Frederick Corder and piano with Tobias Matthay. Corder was a devotee of the works of Wagner, whose music was Bax's principal inspiration in his early years. He later observed, "For a dozen years of my youth I wallowed in Wagner's music to the almost total exclusion – until I became aware of Richard Strauss – of any other". Bax also discovered and privately studied the works of Debussy, whose music, like that of Strauss, was frowned on by the largely conservative faculty of the academy. Although Bax won a Macfarren Scholarship for composition and other important prizes, and was known for his exceptional ability to read complex modern scores on sight, he attracted less recognition than his contemporaries Benjamin Dale and York Bowen. His keyboard technique was formidable, but he had no desire for a career as a soloist. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he had private means that made him free to pursue his musical career as he chose, without the necessity of earning an income. The Times considered that Bax's independence and disinclination to heed his teachers ultimately damaged his art, because he did not develop the discipline to express his imagination to the greatest effect. After leaving the Academy Bax visited Dresden, where he saw the original production of Strauss's Salome, and first heard the music of Mahler, which he found "eccentric, long-winded, muddle-headed, and yet always interesting". Among the influences on the young Bax was the Irish poet W. B. Yeats; Bax's brother Clifford introduced him to Yeats's poetry and to Ireland. Influenced by Yeats's The Wanderings of Oisin, Bax visited the west coast of Ireland in 1902, and found that "in a moment the Celt within me stood revealed". His first composition to be performed – at an academy concert in 1902 – was an Irish dialect song called "The Grand Match". ### Early career Musically, Bax veered away from the influence of Wagner and Strauss, and deliberately adopted what he conceived of as a Celtic idiom. In 1908 he began a cycle of tone poems called Eire, described by his biographer Lewis Foreman as the beginning of the composer's truly mature style. The first of these pieces, Into the Twilight, was premiered by Thomas Beecham and the New Symphony Orchestra in April 1909, and the following year, at Elgar's instigation, Henry Wood, commissioned the second in the cycle, In the Faëry Hills. The work received mixed notices. The Manchester Guardian'''s reviewer wrote, "Mr Bax has happily suggested the appropriate atmosphere of mystery"; The Observer found the piece "very undeterminate and unsatisfying, but not difficult to follow". The Times commented on the "rather second-hand language" at some points, derivative of Wagner and Debussy, although "there is still a great deal which is wholly individual". The Musical Times praised "a mystic glamour that could not fail to be felt by the listener" although the coherence of the piece "was not instantly discernible". A third work in the cycle, Roscatha, was not performed in the composer's lifetime. Bax's private means enabled him to travel to the Russian Empire in 1910. He was in pursuit of Natalia Skarginska, a young Ukrainian whom he had met in London – one of several women with whom he fell in love over the years. The visit eventually proved a failure from the romantic point of view but musically enriched him. In Saint Petersburg he discovered and immediately loved ballet; he absorbed Russian musical influences that inspired material for the First Piano Sonata, the piano pieces, "May Night in the Ukraine" and "Gopak", and the First Violin Sonata, dedicated to Skarginska. Foreman describes him in this period as "a musical magpie, celebrating his latest discoveries in new compositions"; Foreman adds that Bax's own musical personality was strong enough for him to assimilate his influences and make them into his own. Russian music continued to influence him until the First World War. An unfinished ballet Tamara, "a little-Russian fairy tale in action and dance", provided material the composer reused in post-war works. Having given up his pursuit of Skarginska, Bax returned to England; in January 1911 he married the pianist Elsita Luisa Sobrino (b. 1885 or 1886), daughter of the teacher and pianist, Carlos Sobrino, and his wife, Luise, née Schmitz, a singer. Bax and his wife lived first in Chester Terrace, Regent's Park, London, and then moved to Ireland, taking a house in Rathgar, a well-to-do suburb of Dublin. They had two children, Dermot (1912–1976) and Maeve Astrid (1913–1987). Bax became known in Dublin literary circles under the pseudonym "Dermot O'Byrne"; he mixed with the writer George William Russell and his associates, and published stories, verses and a play. Reviewing a selection of the prose and poetry reissued in 1980, Stephen Banfield found most of Bax's earlier poems "like his early music, over-written, cluttered with the secondhand lumber of early Yeats, though the weakness is one of loosely chosen language rather than complexity." Banfield had better things to say of the later poems, where Bax "focuses matters, whether laconically and colloquially upon the grim futility of the 1916 Easter Uprising ... or pungently upon his recurrent disillusionment about love." Some of Bax's writings as O'Byrne were regarded as subversively sympathetic to the Irish republican cause, and the government censor prohibited their publication. ### First World War At the beginning of the war Bax returned to England. A heart complaint, from which he suffered intermittently throughout his life, made him unfit for military service; he acted as a special constable for a period. At a time when fellow composers including Vaughan Williams, Arthur Bliss, George Butterworth and Ivor Gurney were serving overseas, Bax was able to produce a large body of music, finding, in Foreman's phrase, "his technical and artistic maturity" in his early thirties. Among his better-known works from the period are the orchestral tone poems November Woods (1916) and Tintagel (1917–19). During his time in Dublin, Bax had made many republican friends. The Easter rising in April 1916 and the subsequent execution of the ringleaders shocked him deeply. He expressed his feelings in some of his music such as the orchestral In Memoriam and the "Elegiac Trio" for flute, viola, and harp (1916), as well as in his poetry. In addition to his Irish influences, Bax also drew on a Nordic tradition, being inspired by the Norwegian poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Icelandic sagas. Bax's Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra (1917) is seen by the musicologist Julian Herbage as the turning-point from the Celtic to the Nordic in Bax's oeuvre; Herbage views it as a further indication of the shift that Winter Legends, composed thirteen years later, has a Nordic rather than a Celtic setting. During the war Bax began an affair with the pianist Harriet Cohen, for whom he left his wife and children. Musically, she was his muse for the rest of his life; he wrote numerous pieces for her, and she was the dedicatee of eighteen of his works. He took a flat in Swiss Cottage, London, where he lived until the start of the Second World War. He sketched many of his mature works there, often taking them in short score to his favoured rural retreats, Glencolmcille in Ulster, Ireland, and then from 1928 onwards Morar in Scotland, to work on the full score at leisure. ### Inter-war years In a study of Bax in 1919 his friend and confidante, the critic Edwin Evans, commented on the waning of the Celtic influence in the composer's music and the emergence of "a more austere, abstract art". From the 1920s onwards Bax seldom turned to poetic legend for inspiration. In Foreman's view, in the post-war years Bax was recognised for the first time as an important, though isolated, figure in British music. The many substantial works he wrote during the war years were heard in public, and he started writing symphonies. Few English composers had so far written symphonies that occupied a secure place in the repertoire, the best known being Elgar (A and E symphonies) and Vaughan Williams (Sea, London and Pastoral symphonies). During the 1920s and into the 1930s Bax was seen by many as the leading British symphonist. Bax's First Symphony was written in 1921–22, and when first given it was a great success, despite its ferocity of tone. The critics found the work dark and severe. The Daily News commented, "It is full of arrogant, almost blatant, virility. Its prevailing tone colour is dark, very dark – thick clouds with only here and there a ray of sunlight." The Daily Telegraph suggested that if there was any humour in the piece, it was sardonic. The Manchester Guardian noted the severity of the work, but declared it "a truly great English symphony". The work was a box-office attraction at the Proms for several years after the premiere. In Foreman's view, Bax was at his musical peak for a fairly short time, and his reputation was overtaken by those of Vaughan Williams and William Walton. The Third Symphony was completed in 1929 and, championed by Wood, remained for some time among the composer's most popular works. In the mid-1920s, while his affair with Cohen continued, Bax met the twenty-three-year-old Mary Gleaves, and for more than two decades he maintained relationships with both women. His affair with Cohen ripened into warm friendship and continuing musical partnership. Gleaves became his companion from the later 1920s until his death. In the 1930s, Bax composed the last four of his seven symphonies. Other works from the decade include the popular Overture to a Picaresque Comedy (1930), several works for chamber groups, including a nonet (1930), a string quintet (1933), an octet for horn, piano, and strings (1934) and his third and last string quartet (1936). The Cello Concerto (1932) was commissioned by and dedicated to Gaspar Cassadó, who quickly dropped the work from his repertoire. Although Beatrice Harrison championed the concerto in the 1930s and 40s, Bax said, "The fact that nobody has ever taken up this work has been one of the major disappointments of my musical life". Bax was knighted in 1937; he had neither expected nor sought the honour, and was more surprised than delighted to receive it. As the decade progressed, he became less prolific; he commented that he wanted to "retire, like a grocer". Among his compositions from the period was the Violin Concerto (1938). Although not written to commission, he had composed it with the violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz in mind. Heifetz never played it, and it was premiered in 1942 by Eda Kersey with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Wood. ### 1940s and 50s After the death of the Master of the King's Music, Sir Walford Davies, in 1941, Bax was appointed to succeed him. The choice surprised many. Bax, despite his knighthood, was not an Establishment figure; he himself had expressed a disinclination to "shuffle around in knee-breeches". In the opinion of The Times the appointment was not a good one: "Bax was not cut out for official duties and found their performance irksome". Nonetheless, Bax wrote a handful of occasional pieces for royal events, including a march for the Coronation in 1953. After the Second World War began, Bax moved to Sussex, taking up residence at the White Horse Hotel, Storrington, where he lived for the rest of his life. He abandoned composition and completed a book of memoirs about his early years, Farewell, My Youth. The Times found it at times waspish, at times reticent, surprising in parts, and regrettably short. Later in the war Bax was persuaded to contribute incidental music for a short film, Malta G. C.; he subsequently wrote music for David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948) and a second short film, Journey into History (1952). His other works from the period include the short Morning Song for piano and orchestra, and the Left-Hand Concertante (1949), both written for Cohen. Bax and the Poet Laureate, John Masefield, worked on a pageant, The Play of Saint George in 1947, but the project was not completed. In his last years, Bax maintained a contented retirement for much of the time. Walton commented, "an important cricket match at Lord's would bring him hurrying up to town from his pub at Storrington with much greater excitement than a performance of one of his works". In 1950, after hearing his Third Symphony played at Bournemouth, he said, "I ought perhaps to be thinking of an eighth", but by this time he had begun to drink quite heavily, which aged him rapidly and impaired his ability to concentrate on a large-scale composition. He wrote in 1952, "I doubt whether I shall write anything else ... I have said all I have to say and it is of no use to repeat myself." Celebrations were planned by the Hallé Orchestra and others to celebrate Bax's seventieth birthday in November 1953. The celebrations became memorials: while visiting Cork in October 1953 Bax died suddenly of heart failure aged 69. He was interred in St. Finbarr's Cemetery, Cork. ## Music Bax's fellow composer Arthur Benjamin wrote that Bax was "a fount of music", whose "spontaneous and inexhaustible outpourings", unique among his contemporaries, were comparable to those of Schubert and Dvořák. Evans has suggested that Bax's music paradoxically combines robustness and wistfulness, a view that later commentators including Herbage have endorsed. The early music is often instrumentally difficult or orchestrally and harmonically complex; from about 1913 onwards he moved towards a simpler, sparer style. The composer and musicologist Anthony Payne considered that Bax's best works date from the period between 1910 and 1925: he instances The Garden of Fand, Tintagel, November Woods, the Second Piano Sonata, Viola Sonata, and first two symphonies. By the 1930s Bax's music ceased to be regarded as new and difficult, and towards the end of that decade it was attracting less attention than before. The conductor Vernon Handley, long associated with Bax's music, commented that the composer's influences include Rachmaninoff and Sibelius as well as Richard Strauss and Wagner: "He was aware of jazz and many more composers on the European scene than we are now. That finds its way into a person's psyche and personality and into his technique as a musician." The critic Neville Cardus wrote of Bax's music: > The paradox is that Bax's methods, his idiom and tonal atmosphere are impersonal: that is to say, there is no direct unfolding of an individual state of mind or soul as we find in Elgar or Gustav Mahler. Yet there is no mistaking the Bax physiognomy or psychology: always through the gloom and thickets of the symphonies the warm rays of an approachable, lovable man and nature may be felt. York Bowen thought it regrettable that Bax's orchestral works frequently call for exceptionally large forces: "When the score demands such luxuries as triple or quadruple woodwind, six horns, three or four trumpets, extra percussion and perhaps organ, it is undoubtedly throwing extra difficulties in the way of performance." The composer Eric Coates commented that Bax's music appealed greatly to orchestral players: "whichever instrument he wrote for, it was as if he played that instrument himself, so well did he seem to write for it". ### Symphonies While in Dresden in 1907 Bax began work on what he later called "a colossal symphony which would have occupied quite an hour in performance, were such a cloud-cuckoo dream to become an actuality". He added "Happily, it never has\!", but he left a complete piano sketch, which was orchestrated in 2012–13 by Martin Yates, and recorded for the Dutton Vocalion label; it lasts for 77 minutes. The four-movement work, more conventional in structure than his completed symphonies, shows a strong Russian influence in its material. Bax wrote his seven completed symphonies between 1921 and 1939. In a study of the seven, David Cox wrote in 1967 that they were "often dismissed as amorphous by those who imagine that Bax consists only of Celtic mistiness and 'atmosphere'. In fact they have considerable strength and frequent astringence; and formally the thematic material is presented with consistency and purpose." In Herbage's view, the cycle can be seen to fall into two groups – the first three and the last three – with the Fourth Symphony as "an extrovert interlude between these largely introspective works". Handley agreed that the first three could be grouped together; Foreman sees a Celtic influence in all three, with Bax's emotions about the Easter rising and its aftermath discernible. The Fourth is generally regarded as a more optimistic work than its predecessors and successors. Handley calls it "festive", but comments that its ideas developed into darker mood in the Fifth and Sixth. The Fifth is, for Herbage, "the greatest tour-de-force"; the Sixth stands out for its "magnificent final movement", which the critic Peter J. Pirie said "tears the earth up by its roots"; and the Seventh, in the view of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, has an elegiac tone, its simplicity far removed from the discursive and complex music of Bax's earlier years. ### Concertante works Bax's first work for solo instrument and orchestra was the 50-minute Symphonic Variations in E (1919), written for Harriet Cohen. The Times considered it "like one of those deeds of recklessness which in the Army may be followed either by a Court-martial or a V.C. We incline to favour the Court-martial, and to award the V.C. to Miss Harriet Cohen for her part in the enterprise." The Cello Concerto (1932) was Bax's first attempt at a full-scale conventional concerto. It calls for a smaller orchestra than he customarily employed, with no trombones or tuba, and no percussion apart from timpani. Foreman points to many subtleties of scoring, but notes that it has never ranked high among the composer's mature works. The Violin Concerto (1937–38) is, like the last symphony, in a more relaxed vein than most of Bax's earlier music. Cardus singled it out as "unusually fine", although Heifetz may have felt it not virtuosic enough. The composer described it as in the romantic tradition of Joachim Raff. Among the minor concertante works is Variations on the Name Gabriel Fauré (1949) for harp and strings, in a style more neoclassical than most of Bax's music. Bax's last concertante piece was a short work for piano and orchestra (1947) written in his capacity as Master of the King's Music, marking Princess Elizabeth's twenty-first birthday. ### Other orchestral works Bax's tone poems are in a variety of styles and have varied sharply in their popularity. His impressionistic tone poem In the Faëry Hills is described by Grove as "a succinct and attractive piece". It was modestly successful, but Spring Fire (1913) is instanced by Foreman as a difficult work; it was not performed in Bax's lifetime. During the First World War Bax wrote three tone poems, two of which – The Garden of Fand (1913–16) and November Woods (1917) – have remained on the fringes of the modern repertoire, and a third – Tintagel (1917–19) – which in the decade after his death was the only work by which Bax was known to the public. Grove characterises all three as musical evocations of nature, with little expression of subjective personal response. The orchestral piece that was neglected longest was In memoriam (1917), a lament for Patrick Pearse, who was shot for his part in the Easter rising; the work was not played until 1998. Bax reused the main melody for his incidental music to Oliver Twist (1948). Oliver Twist was the second of Bax's film scores. The first was for a short wartime propaganda film, Malta, G. C.. A four-movement suite was published after the release of the latter, containing what The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music calls "a notable March with a genuine nobilmente theme in the best Elgarian tradition". Bax's third and last cinema score was for a ten-minute short film Journey into History in 1952. Other orchestral works include Overture, Elegy and Rondo (1927) – a lightweight piece, according to Grove. The Overture to a Picaresque Comedy (1930), was for a time one of his most popular works. It was described by the composer as "Straussian pastiche" and by The Times as "gay and impudent, and with that tendency to vulgarity which so easily besets the instinctively refined composer determined to let himself go", Cardus thought the work so appealing that to live up to the overture the putative comedy would have to be "written by Hofmannsthal and Shaw in collaboration. Not often is English music so free and audacious as this, so gay and winning." ### Vocal music The critic Peter Latham remarked that he was surprised that Bax had never set any of Yeats's poems to music. Bax replied, "What, I? I should never dare\!". Latham added that Bax's sensitiveness to poetic values made him "painfully aware of the violence that even the best musical setting must do to a poem". Eventually this feeling caused him to give up song-writing completely. At the start of his composing career, songs, together with piano music, formed the core of Bax's work. Some of the songs, mainly the early ones, are conspicuous for the virtuosity of their piano parts, which tend to overwhelm the voice. Grove contrasts the virtuoso accompaniment of "The Fairies" (1905) with the simpler "The White Peace" (1907), one of his most popular songs. The musical analyst Trevor Hold writes that the piano "goes berserk" in "Glamour" (1920). Among the poets whose verses Bax set were his brother Clifford, Burns, Chaucer, Hardy, Housman, Joyce, Synge and Tennyson. The composer himself singled out for mention in his Who's Who article "A Celtic Song-Cycle" (1904) to words by "Fiona Macleod" (a pen name of the poet William Sharp). Among the post-war songs, Hold considers Bax's "In the Morning" (1926) to be one of the best of all settings of Housman's works, "and it makes you wish that Bax had made further explorations into the Shropshire landscape." Hold classes that song, together with "Across the Door" (1921), "Rann of Exile" (1922) and "Watching the Needleboats" (1932), as "truly modern, 20th-century masterpieces of song". Bax wrote a substantial number of choral works, mostly secular but some religious. He was a nominal member of the Church of England, but in the view of the critic Paul Spicer, "None of Bax's choral music can be described as devotional or even suitable for church use ... Here is a secular composer writing voluptuous music." The choral works with religious texts include his largest-scale unaccompanied vocal piece, Mater ora Filium (1921), inspired by William Byrd's Five Part Mass; it is a setting of a medieval carol from a manuscript held by Balliol College, Oxford. The composer Patrick Hadley considered it "an unsurpassed example of modern unaccompanied vocal writing". Bax's other choral works include settings of words by Shelley (Enchanted Summer, 1910), Henry Vaughan (The Morning Watch, 1935), Masefield (To Russia, 1944), and Spenser (Epithalamium, 1947). ### Chamber and solo piano music In his overview of Bax's earlier chamber works, Evans identifies as among the most successful the Phantasy for viola, the Trio for piano, violin, and viola and "a String Quintet of such difficulty that an adequate performance has seldom if ever been possible". He rates the Second Violin Sonata (1915) as the composer's most individual work to that date. For Evans, the culminating point of Bax's early chamber music was the Piano Quintet, a work "of such richness of invention that it would be an ornament to the musical literature of any country or period". Foreman makes particular mention of the First String Quartet (1918 – "a classical clarity of texture and form to its Celtic inspiration", and the "grittier" Second Quartet (1925), the Viola Sonata (1922), the Phantasy Sonata for viola and harp (1927) and the Sonata for Flute and Harp (1928). The composer and musical scholar Christopher Palmer points out that Bax was unusual among British composers in composing a substantial oeuvre for solo piano. Bax published four piano sonatas (1910–32), which are, in Palmer's view, as central to the composer's piano music as the symphonies are to the orchestral output. The first two sonatas are each in a single movement, of about twenty minutes; the third and fourth are in conventional three-movement form. The First Symphony was originally planned as a large-scale piano sonata in E (1921); the manuscript score of the latter came to light in the early 1980s and was performed for the first time in 1983. Bax's own virtuosity as a pianist is reflected in the demands of many of his piano pieces. Palmer cites Chopin and Liszt as major influences on Bax's piano style as well as Balakirev and the other Russians whose influence is seen throughout the composer's work. For piano duo Bax composed two tone poems, Moy Mell (1917) and Red Autumn (1931). His shorter piano pieces include picturesque miniatures such as In a Vodka Shop (1915), A Hill Tune (1920) and Water Music (1929). ## Neglect and revival In his later years Bax's music fell into neglect. Sir John Barbirolli wrote, "I think he felt keenly that his richly wrought and masterly scores were no longer 'fashionable' to-day, but nothing could deter him from the path of complete honesty and sincerity in his musical thought." The neglect became more complete after the composer's death. He had always sustained a Romantic outlook, distancing himself from musical modernism and especially Arnold Schoenberg's serialism, of which Bax wrote in 1951: > I believe that there is little probability that the twelve-note scale will ever produce anything more than morbid or entirely cerebral growths. It might deal successfully with neuroses of various kinds, but I cannot imagine it associated with any healthy and happy concept such as young love or the coming of spring. Neither Bax's views nor his works were fashionable in the two decades after his death. The critic Michael Kennedy writes that the mid-1950s were a time of "immense change and transition in influential musical circles." The music favoured by the cultural establishment until then was regarded as having made Britain musically parochial and indifferent to the developments of the past half-century. In Kennedy's words, "Rubbra, Bax and Ireland found themselves out in the cold". Foreman comments that in the years after Bax's death his reputation was kept alive by a single work – Tintagel. Kennedy estimates that it took "twenty painful years" before the music of the British romantics including Bax made headway against the dominance of modernism. Foreman dates the revival of Bax's music to Handley's performances of the Fourth Symphony and other works with the Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1960s, and the pioneering recordings by Lyrita Recorded Edition of five of the symphonies. Scholarly consideration of Bax's life and music came with studies by Colin Scott-Sutherland (1973) and Foreman (1983). Bax's centenary in 1983 was marked by twenty programmes on BBC Radio 3, covering a wide range of the composer's music. In 1985 the Sir Arnold Bax Trust was established to promote the composer's work including the sponsoring of live performances and recording and publication of his music and writings. Since then a large number of Bax's works, major and minor, have been recorded (see below). The proliferation of Bax recordings has not been matched by a revival in his fortunes in the concert hall; the critic Stephen Moss observed in The Guardian in 2007, "Bax is considered the promotional kiss of death." In 1999 the Oxford University Press published a complete catalogue of Bax's works compiled and annotated by Graham Parlett; Music & Letters called it "a benchmark for any future researchers seeking to compile a catalogue of a composer's works". ## Recordings Two recordings of Bax as a pianist were made in 1929. With Lionel Tertis he recorded his own Viola Sonata for Columbia, and with May Harrison he recorded Delius's Violin Sonata No 1 for the rival HMV label. Of the symphonies, only the Third was recorded in the composer's lifetime; it was played by the Hallé under Barbirolli and released in 1944. The Viola Sonata, Nonet and Mater ora Filium were recorded under the auspices of the English Music Society in 1937 and 1938. The Phantasy Sonata for Viola and Harp, the Sonata for Two Pianos and a handful of the songs were recorded on 78 rpm discs. Of the tone poems, Eugene Goossens conducted the first recording of Tintagel, in 1928; twenty years later a set of The Garden of Fand with Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was released by HMV. By 1955 Bax on record was so scarce that The Record Guide listed only Tintagel, the Coronation March, the unaccompanied choral work What is it Like to be Young and Fair? and the solo piano piece Paean. Parlett included an extensive discography in his 1999 A Catalogue of the Works of Sir Arnold Bax, later expanded and updated in a website. At 2015 the latter lists more than 250 works by Bax that have been recorded and published. The discography includes three complete cycles of Bax's symphonies released on CD, two by Chandos Records, the first conducted by Bryden Thomson (recorded 1983–88) and the second by Handley (2003); between them was a cycle issued by Naxos Records conducted by David Lloyd-Jones (recorded 1997–2001). The major tone poems and other orchestral works have been recorded, many of them in several different versions. Bax's chamber music is well represented on disc, with recordings of most of the works, and multiple versions of many, including the Elegiac Trio, the Clarinet Sonata and the Fantasy Sonata. Much of the piano music has been recorded by pianists including Iris Loveridge, John McCabe, Ashley Wass and Michael Endres, though by 2015 no integral survey had yet been recorded. Of the vocal works, by far the most often recorded is Mater ora Filium, but other choral works, and a representative selection of the songs are on disc. ## Honours and legacy Bax received the gold medals of the Royal Philharmonic Society (1931) and the Worshipful Company of Musicians (1931), and the Cobbett medal for chamber music (1931). He was awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Oxford (1934) and Durham (1935) and the National University of Ireland (1947). A Bax Memorial Room at University College, Cork, was opened by Vaughan Williams in 1955. After Bax's knighthood in 1937 he was advanced to KCVO in 1953. An English Heritage blue plaque, unveiled in 1993, commemorates Bax at his birthplace, 13 Pendennis Road in Streatham. In 1992 Ken Russell made a television film dramatising Bax's later years, The Secret Life of Arnold Bax''. Russell himself portrayed Bax and Glenda Jackson, in her final role before leaving acting for 23 years to pursue her political career, appeared as Harriet Cohen. In 2022 a bronze plaque was installed at the Morar Hotel in Morar to commemorate Bax, who frequently stayed there from 1928 to 1940 and composed several significant works during this period. The initiative was led by the British Music Society, with support from Historic Environment Scotland. ## Notes, references and sources

Wulfhere of Mercia

King of Mercia from 658 to 675

Wulfhere or Wulfar (died 675) was King of Mercia from 658 until 675 AD. He was the first Christian king of all of Mercia, though it is not known when or how he converted from Anglo-Saxon paganism. His accession marked the end of Oswiu of Northumbria's overlordship of southern England, and Wulfhere extended his influence over much of that region. His campaigns against the West Saxons led to Mercian control of much of the Thames valley. He conquered the Isle of Wight and the Meon valley and gave them to King Æthelwealh of the South Saxons. He also had influence in Surrey, Essex, and Kent. He married Eormenhild, the daughter of King Eorcenberht of Kent. Wulfhere's father, Penda, was killed in 655 at the Battle of Winwaed, fighting against Oswiu of Northumbria. Penda's son Peada became king under Oswiu's overlordship but was murdered six months later. Wulfhere came to the throne when Mercian nobles organized a revolt against Northumbrian rule in 658 and drove out Oswiu's governors. By 670, when Oswiu died, Wulfhere was the most powerful king in southern England. He was effectively the overlord of England south of the Humber from the early 660s, although not overlord of Northumbria as his father had been. In 674, he challenged Oswiu's son Ecgfrith of Northumbria, but was defeated. He died, probably of disease, in 675. Wulfhere was succeeded as King of Mercia by his brother, Æthelred. Stephen of Ripon's Life of Wilfrid describes Wulfhere as "a man of proud mind, and insatiable will". ## Mercia in the 7th century England in AD 600 was ruled almost entirely by the Anglo-Saxon peoples who had come to Britain from northwestern Europe over the previous 200 years. The monk Bede, writing in about AD 731, considered the Mercians to be descended from the Angles, one of the invading groups; the Saxons and Jutes settled in the south of Britain, while the Angles settled in the north. Little is known about the origins of the kingdom of Mercia, in what is now the English Midlands, but according to genealogies preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Anglian collection the early kings were descended from Icel; the dynasty is therefore known as the Iclingas. The earliest Mercian king about whom definite historical information has survived is Penda of Mercia, Wulfhere's father. According to Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, a history of the English church, there were seven early Anglo-Saxon rulers who held imperium, or overlordship, over the other kingdoms. The fifth of these was Edwin of Northumbria, who was killed at the Battle of Hatfield Chase by a combined force including Cadwallon, a British king of Gwynedd and Penda. At the time of this victory, Penda was probably not yet king of Mercia. His children included two future kings of Mercia: Wulfhere and Æthelred. After Edwin's death, Northumbria briefly fell apart into its two constituent kingdoms - Bernicia and Deira. Within a year Oswald killed Cadwallon and reunited the kingdoms, and subsequently re-established Northumbrian hegemony over the south of England. However, on 5 August 642, Penda killed Oswald at the Battle of Maserfield, probably at Oswestry in the northwest midlands. Penda is not recorded as overlord of the other southern Anglo-Saxon kings, but he became the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kings after he defeated Oswald. On Oswald's death, Northumbria was divided again: Oswald's son Oswiu succeeded to the throne of Bernicia, and Osric's son Oswine to Deira, the southern of the two kingdoms. The main source for this period is Bede's History, completed in about 731. Despite its focus on the history of the church, this work also provides valuable information about the early pagan kingdoms. For other kingdoms than his native Northumbria, such as Wessex and Kent, Bede had an informant within the ecclesiastical establishment who supplied him with additional information. This does not seem to have been the case with Mercia, about which Bede is less informative than about other kingdoms. Further sources for this period include the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, compiled at the end of the 9th century in Wessex. The Chronicle'''s anonymous scribe appears to have incorporated much information recorded in earlier periods. ## Ancestry Wulfhere was the son of Penda of Mercia. Penda's queen, Cynewise, is named by Bede, who does not mention her children; no other wives of Penda are known and so it is likely but not certain that she was Wulfhere's mother. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives Penda's age as fifty in 626, and credits him with a thirty-year reign, but this would put Penda at eighty years old at the time of his death, which is generally thought unlikely as two of his sons (Wulfhere and Æthelred) are recorded as being young when he was killed. It is thought at least as likely that Penda was 50 years old at his death, rather than at his accession. Wulfhere's date of birth is unknown, but Bede describes him as a youth at the time of his accession in 658, so it is likely he was in his middle teens at that time; Penda would then have been in his thirties at the time Wulfhere was born. Nothing is known of Wulfhere's childhood. He had two brothers, Peada and Æthelred, and two sisters, Cyneburh and Cyneswith; it is also possible that Merewalh, king of the Magonsæte, was Wulfhere's brother. He married Eormenhild of Kent; no date is recorded for the marriage and there is no record of any children in the earliest sources, though Coenred, who was king of Mercia from 704 to 709, is recorded in John of Worcester's 12th-century chronicle as Wulfhere's son. Another possible child is Berhtwald, a subking who is recorded as a nephew of Æthelred, and a third child, Werburh, is recorded in an 11th-century manuscript as a daughter of Wulfhere. An 11th-century history of St. Peter's Monastery in Gloucester names two other women, Eadburh and Eafe, as queens of Wulfhere, but neither claim is plausible. ## Accession and overlordship In 655 Penda besieged Oswiu of Northumbria at Iudeu, the location of which is unknown but which may have been Stirling, in Scotland. Penda took Oswiu's son, Ecgfrith, as hostage, and Oswiu paid tribute, in the form of treasure, to secure Penda's departure. On the way back to Mercia, Oswiu overtook Penda and on 15 November 655 Oswiu and Penda fought on the banks of the (unidentified) River Winwaed. Penda was killed and beheaded by Oswiu, who divided Mercia into northern and southern halves. The northern portion was kept under direct Northumbrian control; the southern kingdom was given to Penda's son Peada, who had married Oswiu's daughter Ealhflæd ca 653. Peada did not remain king long. He was murdered at Easter in 656, perhaps with the connivance of his wife, Oswiu's daughter. Oswiu then ruled all Mercia himself. Bede lists Oswiu as the seventh and last king to hold imperium (or bretwalda in the language of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) over the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Overlordship was a common relationship between kingdoms at this time, often taking the form of a lesser king under the domination of a stronger one. Oswiu went further than this, however, and installed his own governors in Mercia after the deaths of Penda and Peada. This attempt to establish close control of Mercia failed in 658 when three Mercian leaders, Immin, Eafa and Eadbert, rebelled against the Northumbrians. Bede reports that they had kept Wulfhere in hiding, and when the revolt succeeded Wulfhere became king. It has been suggested that the Mercian revolt succeeded because Oswiu may have been occupied with fighting in Pictland, in northern Britain. His nephew the Pictish king Talorgan, son of Eanfrith, had died in 657. How much direct control Oswiu exerted over the southern kingdoms during his imperium is unclear. Bede describes Oswiu's friendship and influence over Sigeberht of the East Saxons, but generally the pattern in the southeast is of more local domination, with Oswiu's influence unlikely to have been particularly strong. Wulfhere appears to have taken over Oswiu's position in many instances. Bede does not list him as one of the rulers who exercised imperium, but modern historians consider that the rise to primacy of the kingdom of Mercia began in his reign. He seems to have been the effective overlord of Britain south of the Humber from the early 660s, though not overlord of Northumbria as his father had been. A document called the Tribal Hidage may date from Wulfhere's reign. Drawn up before many smaller groups of peoples were absorbed into the larger kingdoms, such as Mercia, it records the peoples of Anglo-Saxon England, along with an assessment in hides, a unit of land. The Tribal Hidage is difficult to date precisely; it may have been written down in Wulfhere's reign, but other suggested origins include the reign of Offa of Mercia, or Edwin or Oswiu of Northumbria. ## A convert king Britain had been Christianised under the Romans, but the incoming Anglo-Saxons practiced their indigenous religion (Anglo-Saxon paganism) and the church in Great Britain was limited to the surviving British kingdoms in Scotland and Wales, and the kingdom of Dumnonia in the southwest of England. Missionaries from Rome began converting the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity at the end of the 6th century, and this process was well under way in Penda's reign, though Penda himself remained pagan throughout his life. Records survive of the baptism of other kings at this time—Cynegils of Wessex was baptised in about 640, for example, and Edwin of Northumbria was converted in the mid 620s. However, later kings, such as Cædwalla of Wessex, who ruled in the 680s, are recorded as pagan at their accession. Bede writes that after Wulfhere became king: "Free under their own king, they [the Mercians] gave willing allegiance to Christ their true king, so that they might win his eternal kingdom in heaven". While Wulfhere's father had refused to convert to Christianity, and Peada had apparently converted in order to marry Oswiu's daughter, the date and the circumstances of Wulfhere's conversion are unknown. It has been suggested that he adopted Christianity as part of a settlement with Oswiu. Bede records that two years before Penda's death, his son Peada converted to Christianity, influenced partly by Oswiu's son Ealhfrith, who had married Peada's sister Cyneburh. Peada brought a Christian mission into Mercia, and it is possible that this was when Wulfhere became a Christian. Wulfhere's marriage to Eormenhild of Kent would have brought Mercia into close contact with the Christian kingdoms of Kent and Merovingian Gaul, which were connected by kinship and trade. The political and economic benefits of the marriage may therefore also have been a factor in Wulfhere's Christianisation of his kingdom. Wulfhere's relationship with Bishop Wilfrid is recorded in Stephen of Ripon's Life of Wilfrid. During the years 667–69, while Wilfrid was at Ripon, Wulfhere frequently invited him to come to Mercia when there was need of the services of a bishop. According to Stephen, Wulfhere rewarded Wilfrid with "many tracts of land", in which Wilfrid "soon established minsters for servants of God". According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Wulfhere endowed a major monastery at Medeshamstede, in modern Peterborough. The monastery had initially been endowed by Peada; for the dedication of Wulfhere's gift both Archbishop Deusdedit (died 664), and Bishop Jaruman (held office from 663), were present. The endowment was signed by Wulfhere and Oswiu, and by Sigehere and Sæbbi, the Kings of Essex. ## West Saxons, South Saxons and Hwicce In 661, Wulfhere is recorded in the Chronicle as harrying Ashdown, in West Saxon territory. The Gewisse, thought to be the original group from which the West Saxons came, appear to have originally settled in the upper Thames valley, and what records survive of the 6th century show them active in that region. The Mercian resurgence under Wulfhere placed them under severe pressure. Also in the early 660s, the West Saxon see of Dorchester, in the same area, was divided, and a new bishopric set up at Winchester. This decision was probably a reaction to the advance of the Mercians into the traditional heartland of the West Saxons, leaving Dorchester dangerously close to the border. Within a few years, the Dorchester see was abandoned; the exact date is not known, but it was probably in the mid 660s. In addition to the attack on Ashdown, Wulfhere raided the Isle of Wight in 661. He subsequently gave both the island and the territory of the Meonware, which lay along the river Meon, on the mainland north of the Isle of Wight, to his godson King Æthelwealh of the South Saxons. It seems likely that the ruling dynasty on the island found these arrangements acceptable to some degree, since the West Saxons, under Cædwalla, exterminated the whole family when they launched their own attack on the island in 686. After the conquest of the Isle of Wight, Wulfhere ordered the priest Eoppa to provide baptism to the inhabitants. According to the Chronicle, this was the first time Christian baptism had reached the island. In the early 670s, Cenwealh of Wessex died, and perhaps as a result of the stress caused by Wulfhere's military activity the West Saxon kingdom fragmented and came to be ruled by underkings, according to Bede. Eventually these underkings were defeated and the kingdom reunited, probably by Cædwalla but possibly by Centwine. A decade after Wulfhere's death, the West Saxons under Cædwalla began an aggressive expansion to the east, reversing much of the Mercian advance. In addition to being Wulfhere's godson, King Æthelwealh of the South Saxons had a connection to the Mercians via marriage. His wife was Queen Eafe, the daughter of Eanfrith of the Hwicce, a tribe whose territory lay to the southwest of Mercia. The Hwicce had their own royal family, but it appears that at this date they were already subordinate to Wulfhere: the marriage between Æthelwealh and Eafe may well have taken place at Wulfhere's court, since it is known Æthelwealh was converted there. The kingdom of the Hwicce is sometimes regarded as a creation of Penda's, but it is equally likely that the kingdom existed independently of Mercia, and that Penda and Wulfhere's increasing influence in the area represented an extension of Mercian power rather than the creation of a separate entity. ## East Anglia and the East Saxons In 664, Æthelwald of East Anglia died, and was succeeded by Ealdwulf, who reigned for fifty years. Almost nothing is known of Mercian relations with East Anglia during this time; East Anglia had previously been dominated by Northumbria, but there is no evidence that this continued after Wulfhere's accession. Swithhelm of the East Saxons also died in 664; he was succeeded by his two sons, Sigehere and Sæbbi, and Bede describes their accession as "rulers ... under Wulfhere, king of the Mercians". A plague the same year caused Sigehere and his people to recant their Christianity, and according to Bede, Wulfhere sent Jaruman, the bishop of Lichfield, to reconvert the East Saxons. Jaruman was not the first bishop of Lichfield; Bede mentions a predecessor, Trumhere, but nothing is known about Trumhere's activities or who appointed him. It is apparent from these events that Oswiu's influence in the south had waned by this time, if not before, and that Wulfhere now dominated the area. This becomes even clearer in the next few years, as some time between 665 and 668 Wulfhere sold the see of London to Wine, who had been expelled from his West Saxon bishopric by Cenwealh. London fell within the East Saxons' territory in that period. From the archaeological evidence, it appears to be about this time that the Middle Saxon settlement in London began to expand significantly; the centre of Anglo-Saxon London was not at the old Roman centre, but about a mile west of that, near what is now the location of the Strand. Wulfhere may have been in control of the city when this expansion began. ## Kent, Surrey and Lindsey Eorcenberht was the king of Kent at Wulfhere's accession, and the two families became connected when Wulfhere married Eorcenberht's daughter Eormenhild. In 664 Eorcenberht's son Egbert succeeded to the Kentish throne. The situation in Kent at Egbert's death in 673 is not clearly recorded. It appears that a year passed before Hlothhere, Egbert's brother, became king. Wulfhere may have had an interest in the succession, as through his marriage to Eormenhild he was the uncle of Egbert's two sons, Eadric and Wihtred. It has been speculated that Wulfhere acted as the effective ruler of Kent in the interregnum between Egbert's death and Hlothhere's accession. Another Mercian connection to Kent was through Merewalh, the king of the Magonsæte, and hence a subking under Wulfhere. Merewalh, who may have been Wulfhere's brother, was married to Hlothhere's sister, Eormenburh. Surrey is not recorded as ever having been an independent kingdom, but was at least a province that was under the control of different neighbours at different times. It was ruled by Egbert until the early 670s, when a charter shows Wulfhere confirming a grant made to Bishop Eorcenwald by Frithuwold, a sub-king in Surrey, which may have extended north into modern Buckinghamshire. Frithuwold himself was probably married to Wilburh, Wulfhere's sister. The charter, made from Thame, is dated between 673 and 675, and it was probably Egbert's death that triggered Wulfhere's intervention. A witness named Frithuric is recorded on a charter in the reign of Wulfhere's successor, Æthelred, making a grant to the monastery of Peterborough, and the alliteration common in Anglo-Saxon dynasties has led to speculation that the two men may have both come from a Middle Anglian dynasty, with Wulfhere perhaps having placed Frithuwold on the throne of Surrey. The charter is witnessed by three other subkings, named Osric, Wigheard, and Æthelwold; their kingdoms are not identified but the charter mentions Sonning, a province in what is now eastern Berkshire, and it may be that one of these subkings was a ruler of the Sunningas, the people of that province. This would in turn imply Wulfhere's domination of that province by that time. Wulfhere's influence among the Lindesfara, whose territory, Lindsey, lay in what is now Lincolnshire, is known from information about episcopal authority. At least one of the Mercian bishops of Lichfield is known to have exercised authority there: Wynfrith, who became bishop on Chad's death in 672. In addition it is known that Wulfhere gave land at Barrow upon Humber, in Lindsey, to Chad, for a monastery. It is possible that Chad also had authority there as bishop, probably no later than 669. It may be that the political basis for Mercian episcopal control of the Lindesfara was laid early in Wulfhere's reign, under Trumhere and Jaruman, the two bishops who preceded Chad. ## Defeat and death When Wulfhere attacked Oswiu's son Ecgfrith in 674, he did so from a position of strength. Stephen of Ripon's Life of Wilfrid says that Wulfhere "stirred up all the southern nations against [Northumbria]". Bede does not report the fighting, nor is it mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but according to Stephen, Ecgfrith defeated Wulfhere, forcing him to surrender Lindsey, and to pay tribute. Wulfhere survived the defeat but evidently lost some degree of control over the south as a result; in 675, Æscwine, one of the kings of the West Saxons, fought him at Biedanheafde. It is not known where this battle was, or who was the victor. Henry of Huntingdon, a 12th-century historian who had access to versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle now lost, believed that Mercians had been the victors in a "terrible battle" and remarks upon Wulfhere having inherited "the valour of his father and grandfather". Kirby, however, presumes Æscwine was sufficiently successful to break Wulfhere's hold over Wessex. Wulfhere died later in 675. The cause of death, according to Henry of Huntingdon, was disease. He would have been in his mid-thirties. His widow, Eormenhild, is thought to have later become the abbess of Ely. Æthelred, Wulfhere's brother, succeeded to the throne and reigned for nearly thirty years. Æthelred recovered Lindsey from the Northumbrians a few years after his accession, but he was generally unable to maintain the domination of the south achieved by Wulfhere. ## Marriage and children At an unrecorded date Wulfhere married Eormenhild (alias Ermenilda, etc.), a daughter of Eorcenberht, King of Kent, who survived him and is thought after his death to have become the Abbess of Ely. No issue from the marriage are recorded in the earliest sources, however the following children are recorded by various other sources: - Coenred, King of Mercia from 704 to 709, is recorded in John of Worcester's 12th-century chronicle as Wulfhere's son. - Berhtwald, a sub-king who is recorded as a nephew of Æthelred, - Werburh (alias'' Werburga, etc.), recorded in an 11th-century manuscript as a daughter of Wulfhere. - Saint Wulfad, who having been led by a white hart whilst out hunting in a forest with his brother Ruffin, to the hermitage of Saint Chad, was converted by that saint to Christianity. This caused great displeasure of his father, who had relapsed to paganry, and slew both his sons for their actions. Wulfad was slain by his father at Stone, in Staffordshire, and Ruffin at Burston. Their mother founded Stone Priory on the spot of the burial of both her sons. - Ruffin, slain by his father at Burston, for having converted to Christianity.

Typhoon Sudal

Pacific typhoon in 2004

Typhoon Sudal (), known in the Philippines as Typhoon Cosme, was the strongest typhoon to strike the island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) in about 50 years. Yap is one of the four administrative divisions of the FSM. The entire island, only 17 km (11 mi) in length, experienced typhoon force winds, and 90% of the structures were damaged or destroyed. Damage was most severe in southeastern Yap, where the eyewall struck and winds exceeded 185 km/h (115 mph), but the center of the typhoon passed south of the island. Typhoon Sudal originally formed on April 2, 2004, out of a persistent area of convection east of the FSM. It moved mostly westward for the first week of its duration, with brief northerly and southwesterly turns. Sudal attained tropical storm status on April 5, and it gradually intensified into a typhoon, which is a tropical cyclone with winds of at least 119 km/h (74 mph) and is the equivalent of a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. On April 9, it passed just south of Yap, and shortly thereafter its peak winds were estimated at 240 km/h (150 mph). Later, Sudal moved to the northwest and eventually to the northeast, becoming an extratropical cyclone on April 16 and dissipating two days later. In addition to the damage on Yap, the typhoon dropped heavy rainfall in Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia, where some minor crop damage occurred. Sudal also brushed the United States islands of Guam and Rota with high waves and light rainfall, and later moved very close to the uninhabited Japanese island of Iwo Jima. Overall damage was $14 million (2004 USD, $16.1 million 2010 USD), most of which was on Yap, although no fatalities or serious injuries were reported. Due to the heavy damage, the name was retired and replaced with "Mirinae". The name "Sudal" was contributed by South Korea for the Pacific tropical cyclone list and is the Korean name for the otter. ## Meteorological history The origins of Typhoon Sudal were from a persistent area of convection, or thunderstorms, southeast of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia toward the end of March 2004. Initially, it was in an area of high wind shear, which is the change in wind direction with height and is unfavorable for tropical cyclogenesis. The unfavorable conditions gradually abated, which allowed convection to increase over a broad, developing circulation center. On April 2, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) classified the system as a weak tropical depression near Chuuk in the FSM. It was later classified with the international designation of 0401, meaning it was the first tropical cyclone of 2004. Slow development continued as the system moved slowly westward, and two days later it was classified as Tropical Depression 03W by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC); this was the third tropical cyclone tracked by the agency. Shortly thereafter, the JTWC upgraded the depression to tropical storm status, after convection increased over the circulation. While steadily intensifying, the system turned toward the north. On April 5, the JMA named the system Sudal, after assessing its maximum 10-minute sustained winds at 65 km/h (40 mph). Concurrently, the JTWC estimated 1-minute sustained winds of 100 km/h (65 mph). After crossing over the island of Poluwat, a building ridge to the north caused Sudal to turn west-southwestward. On April 6, an eye feature began forming, and the JTWC upgraded Sudal to typhoon strength about 540 km (340 mi) southeast of Guam, a small island under possession of the United States. The JMA did not follow suit until late the following day, by which time the eye had become more distinct. Around that time, the typhoon turned toward the northwest, and initially it was thought that Sudal would pass safely north of Yap in the FSM. Instead, it turned to the west-southwest toward the island as the ridge intensified. On April 8, the typhoon intensified rapidly; the JTWC reported 1-minute winds of 215 km/h (130 mph), or the equivalent of a Category 4 on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale. Weakening slightly as its forward motion slowed, Typhoon Sudal passed about 45 km (28 mi) south of Yap at 0000 UTC on April 9, which was its closest approach to the island. Intensification continued throughout the day on April 9, with the appearance of concentric eyewalls on satellite imagery; such a feature is indicative of an intense tropical cyclone. Early on April 10, the JTWC estimated that Sudal attained peak 1-minute sustained winds of 240 km/h (150 mph), making the cyclone a super typhoon. At the same time, the JMA estimated peak 10-minute winds of 165 km/h (105 mph), as well as a barometric pressure of 940 mbar (27.76 inHg). Also on that day, Sudal entered the area of warning responsibility of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), which provided the name "Cosme" for local advisories. For several days, the typhoon continued to the northwest, fluctuating in intensity but remaining powerful. On April 12, Sudal turned toward the north and northeast through a weakness in the ridge, and its eye increased to a diameter of about 85 km (53 mi). The next day, the typhoon attained a secondary peak intensity with 1-minute sustained winds reaching 230 km/h (145 mph), although it gradually weakened subsequently due to a combination of increasing upper-level wind shear and cooler water temperatures. Early on April 15, Sudal passed very near the uninhabited Japanese island of Iwo Jima as a rapidly weakening typhoon; at the time, its circulation center was exposed from the deepest convection. Shortly thereafter, both the JTWC and JMA downgraded Sudal to tropical storm status. Late on April 15, the JTWC assessed the storm as becoming extratropical, although the JMA maintained advisories until the following day. As an extratropical storm, Sudal continued northeastward until losing its identity early on April 18, well east of Japan and far south of the Aleutian Islands. ## Impact Early in its duration as a weak tropical storm, Sudal passed near Chuuk state in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). One station reported 170 mm (6.5 in) of rainfall in a 24‐hour period. The passage of the storm left minor roof damage and some crop damage, due to storm surge contaminating groundwater. No deaths or injuries were reported in the state. The storm briefly threatened Guam, and as it passed south of the island, Sudal produced 5.5 m (18 ft) waves and a 0.9 m (3.0 ft) storm surge. A station at Apra Harbor recorded a 69 km/h (43 mph) wind gust, and light rainfall of around 50 mm (2.0 in) was reported, although no damage was reported on the island. High waves also occurred on Rota in the Northern Mariana Islands. The FSM is an independent nation in Compact of Free Association with the United States, and the latter nation is responsible for aid and protection. Further west, Typhoon Sudal intensified quickly as it moved through the Caroline Islands and later Yap state. On Ulithi, a wind gust of 132 km/h (82 mph) was reported, and 6.34 inches (161 mm) of rainfall occurred in a 24‐hour period. High waves of over 5 m (16 ft) struck the island, causing severe beach erosion and damaging subsistence crops. The winds downed a few trees and wrecked some poorly built homes. On nearby Faraulep and Fais islands, similar meteorological conditions and damages were reported. The small Ngulu Atoll received gale-force winds and heavy rainfall, which destroyed half of the island's water storage tanks. Later in its duration, Sudal passed near Iwo Jima, producing wind gusts of 141 km/h (88 mph). ### Yap The worst of the damage occurred on the island of Yap. Initially, the typhoon was expected to pass north of the island without affecting it significantly, but instead the island experienced the brunt of the storm. Typhoon Lupit affected the island in the previous year, from which the islanders were still recovering. With the last minute change in direction, government officials rushed to complete preparations on the island. On the day before the typhoon struck, storm shelters were opened in schools and government buildings that could withstand the winds of Sudal. In anticipation of significant damage, Yap officials sent a request to the FSM government for emergency aid to clean up after the storm. On April 9, the eye of Sudal briefly passed over the southern portion of the island, and winds of 185 km/h (115 mph) struck the island for about four hours. The entire island, only 17 km (11 mi) in length, experienced typhoon force winds. Yap International Airport recorded a peak wind gust of 181 km/h (112 mph); a subsequent survey estimated wind gusts on the island reached 226 km/h (140 mph). Heavy rainfall occurred during Sudal's passage, including 200 mm (7.9 in) in a 48‐hour period at the airport. The lowest pressure on the island was 958.5 mbar (28.30 inHg). Along the coast, the typhoon produced waves of 6.7 m (22 ft) in height, along with a 3.7 m (12 ft) storm surge; the combination sunk several ships and heavily damaged the island's coral reefs, the latter which is one of Yap's primary tourism attractions. When Typhoon Sudal struck the island, there were about 8,000 people living on Yap, with about 1,700 houses. The typhoon destroyed 700 homes, and left another 900 damaged; many of the destroyed homes were wooden. Damage was heaviest in the southeastern portion of the island, including in and around Colonia, the capital city. The strong winds downed trees across the island. Over 90% of the structures on the island were damaged or destroyed, including the hospital, airport, most government facilities, and the water, power and communications systems. One of the five hotels on the island was also destroyed. About 80% of the residents lost power or water after the storm. In the southeastern portion of the island, high waves wrecked most of the coastal homes, and also severely damaged the seawall. The intrusion of salt water destroyed almost all of the food crops on the island. Following the typhoon's passage, about 1,000 people were left homeless, and another 500 were forced to stay in shelters. Overall damage from Typhoon Sudal totaled about $14 million (2004 USD, $16.1 million 2010 USD), most of which on Yap from property damage. Despite the heavy damage, there were no deaths, although there were initial reports of one fatality. Only 8 people required hospital treatment due to injuries, none of them serious. Typhoon Sudal was the strongest typhoon to strike Yap in about 50 years. ## Aftermath Following the passage of Sudal, officials in Yap declared a state of emergency, and a day after the typhoon struck, United States President George W. Bush ordered federal disaster aid for the FSM. The latter declaration provided funding for 75% of the debris removal cost and emergency services. Less than a week after the storm, the Pacific Islands Forum provided $11,500 to Yap for relief efforts. Over the subsequent weeks, the FSM government established a typhoon relief fund of about $250,000. Additionally, the United States government allocated $7,443,000 for relief efforts. Within a few days, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) identified primary concerns for the small island, including fixing the water supply, distributing water, clearing roads, and fixing damaged shelters. On the island, the water supply was rapidly diminishing; more than 80% of the islanders were without clean water, and the water from the treatment plant needed to be boiled for extended periods of time. Health issues included dehydration, sickness, and gastrointestinal problems. Without running water, several people bathed in the oil-contaminated harbor where many boats sunk, which caused skin irritations. Initially, telephone service onto the island was disrupted, and the only method of outside contact was by radio to the University of Guam. The Guam Memorial Hospital dropped a package of medical supplies to Yap, although planes containing aid flying onto the island were disrupted by the damaged runway. About a day after Sudal's passage, the runway was cleared and repaired, which allowed a United States Coast Guard plane to provide relief supplies, including building materials. By April 12, or three days after the typhoon, communication links to the island began to be restored. By four days later, the water treatment plant was repaired. One power station on the island was repaired, but since the strong winds damaged most of the power lines, about 85% of the population remained without electricity. Primary roadways were largely cleared, and all bridges were reopened. About two weeks after the typhoon's passage, there were still 500 people in 18 shelters in Colonia, the capital city, as well as about 400 people in shelters elsewhere. Many others were either residing with relatives or staying at their damaged properties. The United States Army Corps of Engineers arrived on Yap to coordinate debris removal and installing generators. Officials sent 23 flights of aid to the island, as well as one each to the outlying islands of Ulithi and Fais. About 76,000 litres (20,000 gallons) of water were sent to the island, and five large water tanks were installed. Members of the United States Forest Service arrived to coordinate the receiving and distribution of relief supplies. The Yap hospital was poorly suited to handle the typhoon, due to the lack of medications or emergency medical equipment. About 60 FEMA personnel worked at the hospital, who required additional items, such as their own supply of water and food, to prevent them from acquiring local diseases. During their stay on the island, the group assisted 163 people, mostly for minor issues. Overall, there were about 100 FEMA workers involved on the island, although only 20 stayed there due to lack of hotels and rental cars. By 26 days after the storm, more than half of the island had power restored, and the cell phone system was fixed. In the weeks and months after the passage of Sudal, water temperatures around Yap decreased from 30 to 24 °C (86 to 75 °F), due to significant upwelling. The drastic decrease caused unusual amounts of fog over the island, as well as significantly lower tides. By September 2004, rebuilding was still underway, and half of the schools, which had previously been used as shelters, reopened to students. Power and water lines were completely restored. The hospital remained damaged with a temporary roof, and although private businesses quickly re-opened, government buildings took longer to be rebuilt; this was due to the lengthy process of receiving aid from FEMA. Additionally, officials required a land survey to determine where structures were safe to be rebuilt. Due to the heavy damage on Yap, the name Sudal was retired during the 38th session of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and World Meteorological Organization typhoon committee in November 2005; it was replaced with the name Mirinae. ## See also - Other tropical cyclones named Cosme - List of retired Pacific typhoon names - Typhoon Abby (1979) - Typhoon Clara (1984) - Typhoon Yuri (1991) - Typhoon Sonca (2005) - Typhoon Yagi (2006) - Typhoon Nuri (2014) - Typhoon In-fa (2015)

L. D. Reynolds

British classicist (1930–1999)

Leighton Durham Reynolds FBA ((1930-02-11)11 February 1930 – (1999-12-04)4 December 1999) was a British Latinist who was known for his work on textual criticism. Spending his entire teaching career at Brasenose College, Oxford, he prepared the most commonly cited edition of Seneca the Younger's Letters. The central academic achievement of Reynolds's career was his monograph The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters (1965), in which he reconstructed how the text was transmitted through the Middle Ages and revealed that most of the younger manuscripts were of little use for the establishment of the text. He also produced critical editions of Seneca's Dialogues, the works of the historian Sallust, and Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum. In 1968, Reynolds and his Oxford colleague Nigel Guy Wilson co-authored Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, a well-received introduction to textual criticism. Writing about the set of critical editions authored by Reynolds, the Latinist Michael Reeve stated that Reynolds's scholarship had the ability "to cut through dozens of manuscripts to the serviceable core". At the time of its publication, his work on Seneca was considered by some commentators to be difficult to surpass. ## Early life and education Leighton Durham Reynolds was born on 11 February 1930 in the Welsh village of Abercanaid, south of Merthyr Tydfil. His father, Edgar Reynolds, was a civil servant working as a national health insurance clerk. The family of his mother, Hester Hale, had moved to Wales from the English county of Somerset in the previous generation. William Hale, his maternal grandfather, exerted a strong influence on Reynolds during his childhood; a coal miner by profession, he shared with Reynolds a passion for gardening, leading his grandson to join a society for natural history in Cardiff. Supported by the naturalists Bruce Campbell and A. E. Wade, he wrote his first publications on the birds of the Caerphilly Basin. Reynolds attended Caerphilly Grammar School and won a scholarship to study Modern languages at The Queen's College, Oxford. Due to a short-lived regulation stipulating that holders of state scholarships attend the institution nearest to their hometown, he did not take up his place, enrolling instead at University College Cardiff in 1947. Reynolds initially focused on French and Italian and spent some time at the Università per Stranieri di Perugia in Italy. Influenced by the Latinist R. G. Austin, he increasingly turned to the study of Latin, culminating in the award of a first-class degree in 1950. With Austin's support, Reynolds went on to obtain a scholarship for a second undergraduate degree at St John's College, Cambridge. He completed the Classical Tripos, the Classics degree offered by the University of Cambridge, in two years instead of the usual three and received several awards for his performance, including a Craven Fellowship from the university. At St John's, he made the acquaintance of Bryan Peter Reardon, an expert on Ancient Greek novels, the Plato scholar Michael Stokes, and the Latinist John Patrick Sullivan. In 1952, after travelling to Greece, Reynolds began his national service at the Royal Air Force, where most of his time was spent studying Russian in a programme introduced by the linguist Elizabeth Hill. After completing the course, he lodged with a Russian émigré in Paris to improve his fluency in spoken Russian. He left the air force after two years with the rank of pilot officer. ## Career at Oxford In 1954, Reynolds was elected to his first academic appointment, a research fellowship at The Queen's College, Oxford. During his three years there, he worked mainly on the Letters of Seneca the Younger, which would later form the basis of his reputation as a Latinist. In this period, he came under the influence of three textual critics working at Oxford: Neil Ripley Ker, Richard William Hunt, and R. A. B. Mynors, the senior chair of Latin at the university. They encouraged him to study the transmission of the text of Seneca. The post of Classics tutor at Brasenose College, Oxford, had fallen vacant after its incumbent, Maurice Platnauer, had become the college's new Principal. In 1957, after the end of his research fellowship, Reynolds was selected as Platnauer's replacement and duly elected to a tutorial fellowship. He was also appointed a University Lecturer in Greek and Latin Literature. He held both appointments for the rest of his academic career. Reynolds played an active part in the college's governing body, where, according to the Brasenose fellow and chemist Graham Richards, he "held a position of quiet authority". From 1985 to 1987, he served as Vice-Principal and, in 1997, as acting Principal of the college. He supported Brasenose's decision to become the first all-male college of the university to admit female students. In 1996 he was raised to the rank of a professor. In 1962, he married Susan Mary Buchanan, an optometrist and daughter of the Scottish town planner Colin Buchanan. Their wedding reception was held at Brasenose College, where Reynolds was jokingly given an exeat, a permission required by undergraduates to spend a night away from the college, by a student. They moved into Winterslow Cottage in the hamlet of Boars Hill near Oxford, which they later bought from the college. Reynolds and his wife had two daughters and a son. Reynolds was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1987. Over the course of his career, he held a number of visiting fellowships and professorships; he spent periods at the University of Texas at Austin, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (twice), and at Cornell University (twice). From 1975 to 1987, he was co-editor of The Classical Review. ## Retirement and death Reynolds retired from his teaching duties in 1997, one year after being appointed to a professorship. Around this time, he was diagnosed with cancer. In an obituary in the Proceedings of the British Academy, the Latinist Michael Winterbottom wrote that Reynolds underwent oncological surgery in 1995 and was later treated at Churchill Hospital, Oxford. According to the Hellenist Nigel Guy Wilson, the diagnosis was made only in 1999 with Reynolds opting for palliative treatment. He died on 4 December 1999 in Oxford. ## Contributions to scholarship ### Seneca's Letters In the application for his position at Brasenose, Reynolds wrote that he had been working on the textual transmission of Seneca the Younger's Letters, and that he aimed to publish a new critical edition of the text together with a general survey of the topic. While conducting this research, he had travelled extensively in Europe to study the relevant manuscripts. In 1965, he published the results of his work: an edition of the Letters in the Oxford Classical Texts series and a monograph entitled The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters. Reynolds set out to answer two central questions regarding the medieval manuscripts of the Letters: how authoritative are the 'younger' manuscripts, written after the 12th century, in establishing the text, and how do they relate to the older segment of the tradition? For Letters 1–88, which were transmitted separately, he elaborated the stemma introduced by the German philologist Otto Foerster. Reynolds established a transmission in three distinct branches (p, α, γ) in which α and γ characteristically offer common readings. He demonstrated more thoroughly than his predecessor how the younger manuscripts descended through the γ branch. This breakthrough in particular is described by the classicist Gregor Maurach as the result of time-consuming scholarly groundwork. The transmission of Letters 89–124 depends on a much narrower manuscript base which he sought to supplement. Previously, three individual manuscripts had been considered the key textual witnesses (B, Q, p); Reynolds showed that p and Q were in fact representatives of larger groups of manuscripts comprising several more recent manuscripts. This part of his research drew praise from reviewers, with the classicist B. L. Hijmans commenting that its method of reconstruction would "be very useful in seminars on textual criticism". Reynolds's concluding remarks about the younger manuscripts stated that, with few exceptions, "they have no contribution to make to the reconstruction of the text". Writing for The Classical Review, the Latinist E. J. Kenney said that this conclusion was "an altogether Herculean feat" but added that it "hardly prepare[d]" readers for the large role these manuscripts played in editions of the Letters. Appearing in two volumes, Reynolds's edition of the Letters was based on the results of his monograph. For Kenney, the edition displayed "almost constantly sound" judgement of textual problems and had a critical apparatus without "serious inconsistencies". Although he criticised a number of editorial aspects, he concluded by writing that "[Reynolds's] edition will surely be for a long time to come the standard text of this undervalued work". Hijmans expressed a similar opinion while stating that Reynolds's work may not have provided the final assessment of all available manuscripts. ### Further critical editions In 1977, Reynolds published a critical edition of Seneca's Dialogues. Having identified the Codex Ambrosianus (A) as the most important source of the text, he relied heavily on it and drew on the readings of younger manuscripts only where A showed signs of corruption. For Latinist D. R. Shackleton Bailey, the result was a text which surpassed that published in 1905 by the German scholar Emil Hermes. Shackleton Bailey further stated that "it seems unlikely that [Reynolds's text] can ever be greatly bettered". According to the reviewer Daniel Knecht, Reynolds was more willing than previous editors to posit cruces in places where the text was irremediably corrupt and to delete passages he considered inauthentic. Reynolds continued his work on Latin prose authors in 1991 with an edition of the collected works of the Roman historian Sallust. At that time, the standard text had been a 1954 edition by Alfons Kurfess in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana series. Reynolds innovated by limiting himself to reporting five manuscripts in passages where Kurfess had provided unnecessary detail. For Stephen Oakley, the Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge, the greatest merit of the edition was its judicious provision of readings from less reliable manuscripts, which has led to the solution of a difficult textual problem in chapter 114 of Sallust's Jugurtha. The classicist Stephen Shierling considered the differences between the editions of Kurfess and Reynolds of "modest importance" but said the new text was "cleaner and more consistent". Published in 1998, the final critical edition of his career covered Cicero's philosophical text De finibus bonorum et malorum. This work had been edited competently by the Danish classical scholar Johan Nicolai Madvig in 1839 but technological and methodological advances had necessitated a new rendition of the text. Reynolds remodelled the stemma by defining two principal transmission groups (α and φ) to which all available manuscripts belong. In addition to a concise critical apparatus, he fitted the text with a secondary apparatus providing background information on the philosophical concepts discussed. ### Scribes and Scholars After publishing his work on Seneca's Letters, Reynolds collaborated with Nigel Guy Wilson, a Hellenist and fellow of the neighbouring Lincoln College, to produce a general introduction to the transmission of classical texts. They were tasked with this endeavour after Oxford University Press had been made aware of the need for such a book. Their joint volume was published in 1968 as Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature. The book appeared in two further editions (1974 and 1991) and was translated into Italian, French, Greek, Spanish, and Japanese. The book contained chapters on the afterlife of classical texts in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance; the last chapter discussed modern textual criticism. Scribes and Scholars was met with enthusiastic reviews from the scholarly world. The Hellenist Patricia Easterling considered it to have achieved its aim of providing a general introduction with "striking success". She commented that the book had "one serious drawback: its scholarship is so good that more advanced students will also want to use it, and for them it will be frustrating to find that there are no footnotes". The philologist Conor Fahy termed it an "excellent short manual" though he criticised the authors' assertion that Greek was the only language spoken in Southern Italy and Sicily during the Middle Ages. For the reviewer Wolfgang Hörmann, the book constituted "a work of art in its own way" (). Commenting on the final chapter on modern textual criticism, he praised Reynolds and Wilson for avoiding the common pitfall of forcing the discipline into a rigid methodological system. ## Legacy Reynolds's reputation as a scholar rests on his contributions to textual criticism. In an obituary for The Independent, the Latinist Michael Reeve wrote that Reynolds's scholarship had the ability "to cut through dozens of manuscripts to the serviceable core". Scribes and Scholars, the introduction to textual criticism co-authored with Wilson, was described by Reeve as "the kind of book that one simply cannot imagine not being there". Even though his scholarship on Seneca was at the time of its publication considered by some commentators to be insurpassable, Winterbottom considers the transmission of the Letters much more open than Reynolds envisaged. As of 2001, his text was nonetheless still consulted as the standard edition. Writing in 2019 for the bibliographical repository Oxford Bibliographies Online, the Seneca scholars Ermanno Malaspina, Jula Wildberger, and Veronica Revello named Reynolds's editions as "the best and most cited" texts of Seneca's works. ## Publications The following monographs and editions were written by Reynolds: - Reynolds, L. D. (1965). L. Annaei Senecae Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales. 2 Volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press - - - - - - Reynolds also published the following articles or chapters: - - - - - - - - - -

Saint Vincent Beer

Beer brewed by monks in Pennsylvania, U.S.

Saint Vincent Beer was a dark lager brewed by monks at Saint Vincent Archabbey in Unity Township, Pennsylvania, United States, between 1856 and 1918. Pope Pius IX granted the monks permission to brew in 1852, ending a dispute with the Diocese of Pittsburgh. The brewery was located in a log cabin near the Saint Vincent Archabbey Gristmill and a brick building supplemented the cabin in 1868. After production ceased, the monastery used the buildings for storage until they burned down in 1926. The walls were removed from the site in 1995 during the restoration of the gristmill. Production peaked at around 1,100 barrels in 1891. The popularity and widespread availability of the beer brought the monastery to the attention of the Catholic temperance movement. The theologian and professor Francesco Satolli, then the Apostolic Delegate to the United States, wrote to Archabbot Leander Schnerr asking for the brewing to cease in 1895. As part of a media campaign against the monastery, temperance advocate and Catholic priest George Zurcher published Monks and Their Decline in 1898 criticizing the archabbey for supporting the production and distribution of alcohol. The negative press ended its external sale by 1900, although the monks continued to produce the drink for internal consumption for another 18 years. Aurelius Stehle closed the brewery in 1918 after he was elected coadjutor archabbot. Several conflicting accounts exist concerning what became of its recipe. Local legend holds the monastery sold it to another brewery; however, the archabbey claims that it was never recorded and lost. ## Early years Boniface Wimmer emigrated to the United States from modern-day Germany where monks brewed beer in abbeys. In 1848, he and a group of novices settled in Unity Township, Pennsylvania, near Latrobe, and established Saint Vincent Archabbey. The following year, he gained ownership of a tavern and brewery in Indiana, Pennsylvania, but Michael O'Connor, the Bishop of Pittsburgh and a temperance supporter, objected to monastic ownership. Wimmer agreed to close the tavern but sought to retain the brewery. This upset O'Connor and he refused to grant the community that Wimmer founded status as a priory. Wimmer appealed O'Connor's refusal to Pope Pius IX during a trip to Rome, but was denied. Through pressure from Cardinal Giacomo Filippo Fransoni and King Ludwig I of Bavaria, the monks gained permission from Pius IX in 1852 to brew beer "providing that every disorder is avoided". Included was permission to sell the beverage wholesale. In 1856, the first Saint Vincent Beer was manufactured when the archabbey established a brewery in a small log building next to the archabbey's gristmill. To avoid further confrontation with O'Connor, Saint Vincent Beer was not made available for widespread sale until he resigned in 1860. Once established, the drink sold well and could be found as far away from the monastery as Baltimore and New York City by 1868. To meet demand, a new two-story brick brewery building was constructed next to the old one. This began the golden age of Saint Vincent Beer, which lasted through 1888. By 1868 the monastery was producing about 900 U.S. beer barrels (100,000 liters; 30,000 U.S. gallons; 20,000 imperial gallons) per year, with an output that peaked in 1891 at 1,119 barrels. For each barrel sold in 1868 at a $14 () wholesale price, the archabbey made $3 (). Other contemporary buildings added included a malt house, two ice houses, cellars for storing the finished beverage, and a cooper house where barrels were produced by the monks. ## Beer Fuss During the 1890s, Saint Vincent's golden age ended in controversy. The growing temperance movement in the United States condemned the archabbey in a era that became known as the "Beer Fuss" or "Beer Controversy" At the time, the Catholic Church was working to reduce alcoholism among recent immigrants to the United States. At the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, a resolution from reformist clergy banning monasteries from manufacturing beer was defeated, but a milder one chastising lay members who sold alcohol and encouraging them to enter another profession passed. Catholic temperance advocates saw the production and sale of the beverage by the monks as personally shameful and actively undermining of the church's ministry. Omer Klein, an archivist at Saint Vincent College, considers intra-Catholic ethnic conflicts between Irish-American Catholics and the German-American archabbey as the cause of the Beer Fuss. Jerome Oetgen, a historian of the archabbey, recounts how they drew criticism from Irish-Americans but counters that many of the staunchest critics were fellow German-Americans. The Beer Fuss began in 1892 after Andrew Hintenach, the second archabbot and in place for only four and a half years, resigned in disagreement over the manufacturing of alcohol. The "Abstinence Society" began the same year to pressure the monastery to cease manufacture. In 1895, the parish priest Ferdinand Kittell wrote to Leander Schnerr, the third archabbot, asking him to end the archabbey selling the drink to the public. Kittell wrote: > No complaint is made of the brewery itself, or your right of making or using beer; that is your own affair which we have no right to meddle. But for the fact of your selling it, and it being advertised in secular papers as "on tap" in various saloons, is regretted by the clergy of the diocese without exception, for it brings odium on the Church and shame on our people. Schnerr declined Kittell's request given the permission the monastery received in 1852 from Pope Pius IX. Since the local diocese did not control the monastery, Kittell petitioned Francesco Satolli, the Apostolic Delegate to the United States, to stop the archabbey from selling Saint Vincent Beer. Satolli did not forward Kittell's letter to Pope Leo XIII but wrote to Schnerr asking him to stop the large-scale production of alcohol due to the "evil of intemperance" and the work of the Catholic temperance movement. Kittell also applied pressure from within the church and engaged in a media campaign against the monks by writing anti-Saint Vincent Archabbey articles in the Catholic Citizen and the Western Watchman. Kittell suggested that the archabbey and its seminary and college take after the University of Notre Dame, a thriving Catholic institution of higher education that did not need to produce alcohol to balance its finances. The Catholic priest and temperance advocate George Zurcher released his Monks and Their Decline pamphlet in 1898. Zurcher criticized the archabbey for brewing and not joining the temperance movement and mocked the post-nominal letters of Benedictines, OSB, claiming that they should stand for "the Order of Sacred Brewers", claiming the monks were contributing to the drunkenness of lay Catholics. The pamphlet brought the monastery into the popular consciousness outside of Pennsylvania. After being prompted by Martin Ignatius Joseph Griffin, a prominent historian of the Catholic Church, the New York Voice, a newspaper run by the Prohibition Party, released a "sensationalized exposé" about the archabbey, college, and brewery in April 1898. The monks responded with silence and the media lost interest in the story. ## Decline Due to the negative publicity and pressure from temperance groups, the monastery discontinued sales on April 29, 1899. For the next 18 years, the monks continued to brew the beverage for internal use. The brewery closed after Aurelius Stehle was elected coadjutor archabbot in 1918. The following year the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, which started the Prohibition era. Officially, the brewery building was used for storage for the farm in subsequent years, but monks may have made some bootleg beer there as well. On January 13, 1926, most of the brewery buildings burned down in the middle of the night. The ruins of the brewery complex stood until 1995 when they were demolished during the restoration of the gristmill. There are several conflicting accounts of what became of its recipe; local legend has it that the monks sold it to either the Latrobe Brewing Company or the Loyalhanna Brewing Company. The Latrobe Bulletin speculated in 2003 that the Loyalhanna Brewing Company's Monastery Beer was either the Saint Vincent Beer recipe or just named after Saint Vincent Archabbey. According to the monastery, the recipe was not written down and was lost when the brewmaster died. More recently, a monk, named only as 'Father Thomas', claimed the recipe was not lost, but stated that it was "not accessible" to the public in a 2009 NPR segment. ## Description The drink was a thick, dark, and hoppy lager, which local curator Lauren Lamendola described as "made in the tradition of authentic Bavarian breweries". The Pittsburgh Press praised the beverage's purity, quality, and slow brewing process. Monks harvested the necessary crops from the archabbey's fields, then malted and fermented the beer with water and hops on-site. They also aged the beer in open vats before barrelling it into casks produced on site. When they sold it, they did so in limited quantities to one or two bars in a town.

Here We Go Again (Ray Charles song)

1967 song by Ray Charles

"Here We Go Again" is a country music standard written by Don Lanier and Red Steagall that first became notable as a rhythm and blues single by Ray Charles from his 1967 album Ray Charles Invites You to Listen. It was produced by Joe Adams for ABC Records/Tangerine Records. To date, this version of the song has been the biggest commercial success, spending twelve consecutive weeks on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at number 15. The most notable cover version is a duet by Charles and Norah Jones, which appeared on the 2004 album Genius Loves Company. This version has been the biggest critical success. After Genius Loves Company was released, "Here We Go Again" earned Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Pop Collaboration at the 47th Grammy Awards in February 2005, posthumously for Charles, who died before the album's release. Another notable version by Nancy Sinatra charted for five weeks in 1969. Johnny Duncan charted the song on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart for five weeks in 1972, while Roy Clark did so for seven weeks in 1982. The song has been covered in a wide variety of musical genres. In total, five different versions have been listed on the music charts. Although its two most successful versions have been rhythm and blues recordings, many of its other notable covers were featured on country music albums. "Here We Go Again" was first covered in an instrumental jazz format, and many of the more recent covers have been sung as duets, such as one with Willie Nelson and Norah Jones with Wynton Marsalis accompanying. The song was released on their 2011 tribute album Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles. The song lent its name to Red Steagall's 2007 album as well. Cover versions have appeared on compilation albums by a number of artists, even some who did not release "Here We Go Again" as a single. ## Original version In November 1959, after twelve years as a professional musician, Ray Charles signed with ABC Records, following the expiration of his Atlantic Records contract. According to Will Friedwald in A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, "His first four ABC albums were all primarily devoted to standards..." In the 1960s, he experienced crossover success with both rhythm and blues and country music. Because Charles was signed to ABC as a rhythm and blues singer, he decided to wait until his contract was up for its three-year renewal before experimenting with country music, although he wanted to do so sooner. With the assistance of ABC executive Sid Feller, he gathered a set of country songs to record, despite the wishes of ABC. The release of his 1962 country albums Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music and its follow-up Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Vol. 2 broadened the appeal of his music to the mainstream. At this point, Charles began to appeal more to a white audience. In 1962 he founded his own record label, Tangerine Records, which ABC-Paramount promoted and distributed. "Here We Go Again" was recorded during a phase in Charles' career when he was focused on performing country music. Thus, "Here We Go Again" was a country music song released by the Tangerine label ABC-Paramount, but performed in Charles' rhythm and blues style. However, his works did not bear the Tangerine label until 1968. Feller left ABC in 1965, but he returned to arrange Charles' 1967 album, Ray Charles Invites You to Listen. Joe Adams produced and engineered the album, which included "Here We Go Again". First released by Charles in 1967, "Here We Go Again" was written by Lanier and Steagall and published by the Dirk Music Company. Charles recorded it at RPM International Studios, Los Angeles, and the song was listed as the sixth of ten tracks on Ray Charles Invites You to Listen. Starting in 1987, it was included in numerous greatest hits and compilation albums. When Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music was reissued in 1988, the song was added as a bonus track. It was also included on the 1988 album Ray Charles Anthology. ### Composition According to the sheet music published by Dirk Music, "Here We Go Again" is set in 12/8 time with a slow shuffle tempo of sixty-nine beats per minute. The song is written in the key of B major. It is primarily a country song, but contains gospel influences. According to Matthew Greenwald of Allmusic, "'Here We Go Again' is a soulful ballad in the Southern blues tradition. Lyrically, it has a resignation and pain that makes the blues, simply, what it is. The recording has a simple and sterling gospel arrangement and, in retrospect, is one of Charles' finer attempts in the studio from the 1960s." ### Reception Greenwald described the original version of "Here We Go Again" as "Another excellent example of how Ray Charles was able to fuse blues and country". In a review for the single, a writer for Billboard magazine wrote that the song could easily be a "blockbuster" for Charles. The original version debuted at number 79 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the May 20, 1967, issue and number 48 on the US Billboard Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles top 50 chart on June 10, 1967. For the weeks ending July 15, 22 and 29, the song spent three weeks at its peak position of number 15 on the Hot 100 chart. It spent July 22 and 29 at its peak position of number 5 on the Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles chart. By August 12, it fell out the Hot 100 chart, ending a 12-week run. It remained on the Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles chart for 13 weeks ending on September 2. "Here We Go Again" was Charles' last single to enter the top twenty of the Hot 100. For the year 1967 the song finished at number 80 on the US Billboard Year-End Hot 100 chart and 33 on the Year-End Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles chart. Abroad, it debuted on the UK Singles Chart top 40 at number 38 on July 8, 1967, which would be its peak. It totalled 3 non-consecutive weeks on the chart. In the Netherlands, "Here We Go Again" appeared on the singles chart at number 10 on July 15, 1967, and later peaked at number three. According to Will Friedwald, this song is an example of Charles vocalizing in what would ordinarily be a generally extraneous manner for dramatic effect by using a different voice than he had ever previously exhibited. He sang "... not just using the squeak—using a whole new kind of squeak, in fact—for additional coloring on the sidelines, but making it the heart of the matter, literally squeaking out the words and notes in harmony with the Raelettes" (his background singers). ### Track listing - 7-inch single 1. "Here We Go Again" – 3:14 2. "Somebody Ought to Write a Book About It" – 3:02 According to Allmusic, the solo version is listed at lengths between 3:14 and 3:20 on various albums. ### Credits Charles is credited as vocalist and pianist with unknown accompaniment. Feller is credited for having arranged and conducted the recording. This is one of two songs on the album ("Yesterday" being the other) that in addition to being listed as ABC-Par ABC595 is credited as Dunhill DZS036 [CD]. The individual song had a label number ABC/TRC 10938. "In the Heat of the Night" also had a Dunhill credit but a different number for both Dunhill and ABC. ## Nancy Sinatra version Nancy Sinatra recorded a cover of the song for her 1969 album Nancy, which was her first album after ending her business relationship with producer Lee Hazlewood. The cover, which according to programming guides had an easy listening and country music appeal, was produced by Billy Strange. The B-side to the single, "Memories", was written by Strange along with Mac Davis. Billboard magazine staff reviewed the song favorably, stating that the cover was a "smooth sing-a-long pop style". They also commended Sinatra's singing, calling it a "fine" performance, noting that it would likely return her to the Billboard charts. Sinatra's version was later remastered and reissued in 1996. ### Chart performance Although CD Universe describes the song as a country music song, it never charted on country music charts. For the week ending May 17, 1969, the song was listed among US Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart at number 106 and debuted on the US Billboard Easy Listening Top 40 chart at number 30. The following week it debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 98, its apex for its two-week stay. The song then spent a total of two weeks on the Hot 100. For the week ending June 7, the song spent a second consecutive week at its peak position of number 19 on the Easy Listening chart. The song remained on the chart for five weeks until June 14, 1969. In Canada "Here We Go Again" debuted at number 38 on the RPM Adult Contemporary chart (previously Young Adult Chart) on June 2, 1969. It peaked at number 21 for the week of June 16, 1969. The song spent a total of five weeks on the chart. According to Allmusic databases, 1969 was the final year in her career that Sinatra reached the Hot 100 chart (with "Here We Go Again", "God Knows I Love You" and "Drummer Man"). ### Track listing - 7-inch vinyl single 1. "Here We Go Again" – 3:07 2. "Memories" – 3:40 According to Allmusic the original track was 3:09, but when it appeared on the 2006 compilation album Essential Nancy Sinatra, it was 3:11. The single was initially released through Reprise Records. In a non-exclusive licensing agreement, Reprise (part of Warner Music) gave RCA Records the rights to distribute the records of some of their artists including Sinatra and Dean Martin. In 1971, Sinatra and Reprise parted ways, so she signed a long-term contract with RCA Records. ### Credits The following musicians performed on this track: - B.J. Baker Singers (backup vocals) - The Blossoms (backup vocals) The following musicians performed on this album: - Al Casey (guitar) - Jerry McGee (guitar) - Red Rhodes (steel guitar) - Sid Sharp (violin, strings) - Jim Horn (flute) - Roy Caton (trumpet) - Don Randi (piano) - Jerry Scheff (bass guitar) - Carol Kaye (bass guitar) - Hal Blaine (drums) ## Norah Jones and Ray Charles duet version In 2004, Charles re-recorded "Here We Go Again" as a duet with American singer-songwriter Norah Jones, who grew up listening to his music. During Jones' Billboard interview for her 2010 collaboration album ...Featuring, which included her "Here We Go Again" duet, she said "I got a call from Ray asking if I'd be interested in singing on this duets record. I got on the next plane and I brought my mom. We went to his studio and did it live with the band. I sang it right next to Ray, watching his mouth for the phrasing. He was very sweet and put me at ease, which was great because I was petrified walking in there." She noted in one ...Featuring interview that the only part that was not done live was a piano overlay that she added afterwards to complement Charles' keyboard. In the same interview, she noted that she had been given the opportunity to select a song from Charles' songbook to perform as a duet and felt that this one provided the best opportunity to harmonize rather than alternate vocal verses. On the record, the two singers vocalize, accompanied by Billy Preston on Hammond organ, who had at one time been the regular organist in Charles' band. ### Reception As part of Charles' Grammy Award for Album of the Year-winning Genius Loves Company, the song proved to be the most popular and critically acclaimed on the album. Although the song had its early detractors, it received mostly favorable reviews. Several reviewers noted the complementarity of Jones and Charles. The Daily Vault's Jason Warburg described the song as a "jazzy, slinky pas de deux" in which Charles matches Jones note for note." JazzTimes Christopher Loudon said Charles "blends seamlessly with Jones on a velvet-and-buckram" performance. The song was described by the Orlando Sentinel's Jim Abbott as a recreation of one of the gems from Charles' country music phase of the 1960s that produced the perfect "combination of voices and instruments" with Preston's accompanying role on Hammond B3. As opposed to other tracks on the album, when Charles' voice was understated, this song was said to represent his "indomitable spirit", while Jones performed as "an empathetic foil, [with] her warm, lazy vocals meshing convivially with his over a spare but funky arrangement". Author Mike Evans wrote that "there's a mutual warmth of purpose in every breath [Charles and Jones] take" on the song. Music Week staff noted the timeliness of the release with the biographical film Ray in theaters and described the song as soulful, that finely combines Charles' "deep, honeyed growl with Jones's lighter timber", while noting Preston for his "sweeping" organ work. The song received other specific forms of praise. Robert Christgau notes that Jones carried the vocal burden as did many of Charles's duet partners on the album. USA Today's Steve Jones said the song "strikes an easy groove". PopMatters' Kevin Jagernauth says "Jones nicely compliments Charles on this beautiful opening track". Preston's performance was favorably described by The Washington Post's Richard Harrington as "smoky". Critic Randy Lewis from the Chicago Tribune noted that the song's "countrified ache" represented that part of Charles' career. When the song was included on Jones' ...Featuring, which included three of her collaborations from Albums of the Year and several from albums that were nominees, the song did not stand out. Few of the reviews at Metacritic had substantive comments on the duet when included among her group of collaborations. While reviewing ...Featuring, Jonathan Keefe of Slant Magazine wrote that the duet was a "more staid and less compelling recording" on the album. However, Allmusic staff noted that she worked comfortably with Charles and Chris Rizik of Soul Tracks said the track was more than just filler. ### Awards and nominations In December 2004, the Jones–Charles version of the song was nominated in two categories at the 47th Grammy Awards. At the February 13, 2005 awards ceremony, the duet earned the award for Record of the Year and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. It was the second Record of the Year winner not to make the Hot 100 (following "Walk On" in 2001 by U2). The song won Record of the Year, but not Song of the Year. Record of the Year is awarded to the artist(s), producer(s), recording engineer(s) and/or mixer(s), if other than artist for newly recorded material. Song of the Year is awarded to the songwriter(s) of a new song or a song first achieving prominence during the eligibility year. Steagall and Lanier are credited as the writers of this song from their work on its original version in 1967. Thus, the song was not a new song. ### Chart performance For the week ending September 18, 2004, Genius Loves Company sold 202,000 copies, ranking second on the US Billboard 200 chart and becoming Charles' highest-charting album in over 40 years. Digital singles sales saw 12 of the 13 tracks on the album make the US Billboard Hot Digital Tracks Top 50 chart. "Here We Go Again" was the download sales leader among the album's songs that totaled 52,000 digital downloads. During the week the album was released, the song debuted on the US Billboard Hot Digital Tracks chart at number 26. "Here We Go Again" fell out of the top 50 two weeks later. It was released as a single for digital download on January 31, 2005. On May 22, 2019, the song was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipments exceeding 500,000 units in the United States. After the album earned eight Grammy Awards and the song won Record of the Year, sales picked up and the album was re-promoted. "Here We Go Again" entered the US Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart at number five in the issue dated (for the week ending) February 26, 2005. The song charted for a week on both the US Billboard Hot Digital Songs top 75 at number 73 and the US Billboard Pop 100 at number 74 for the week ending March 5, 2005, but still did not make the Hot 100, ranking 113th before falling out of the chart. However, it ascended to its Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart peak position of number two for the week ending March 5, 2005. A compact disc single of the song was released on April 19, 2005. In Austria, the duet debuted on the Ö3 Austria Top 40 chart at number 53 on March 6, 2005, and peaked the following week at number 52. It logged six weeks on the chart. "Here We Go Again" entered the French Singles Chart at number 54 on April 2, 2005 and peaked one week later at number 51. It lasted 10 weeks on the top 100 chart. ### Certification On May 22, 2019, the song achieved gold RIAA certification. ### Track listing - CD single''' 1. "Here We Go Again" (Ray Charles and Norah Jones) – 3:59 2. "Mary Ann" (Poncho Sanchez featuring Ray Charles) – 5:05 3. "Interview With Norah Jones" – 1:35 According to Allmusic, the duet version was between 3:56 and 3:59 on various albums. ### Credits - Musicians - Ray Charles (keyboard) - Norah Jones (piano) - Billy Preston (Hammond B3) - Irv Kramer (guitar) - Tom Fowler (bass guitar) - Ray Brinker (drums) - Technicians - John Burk (producer) - Terry Howard (recording) - Seth Presant (Pro Tools engineer) - Ken Desantis (assistant engineer) - Bill Kramer (assistant engineer) - Mark Fleming (assistant engineer) - Al Schmitt (mixer) - Steve Genewick (assistant mixer) - Doug Sax (mastering) - Robert Hadley (mastering) The song was recorded at RPM International Studio (Los Angeles), mixed at Capitol Studios and mastered at the Mastering Lab. ## Country chart versions Johnny Duncan charted a version of the song for Columbia Records that missed the Hot 100 chart. It debuted on the Hot Country Songs chart on September 30, 1972, peaking at number 66 and spending a total of five weeks on the chart. The song also spent five weeks on the Cashbox Country Singles Chart, debuting on October 7, 1972, and peaking at number 61 three weeks later. In 1982, Roy Clark produced a version of the song on his Turned Loose album for Churchill Records that he performed on the November 6, 1982 (season 15, episode 9), episode of Hee Haw. It missed the Hot 100 chart, but it entered the Hot Country Songs chart for the week ending October 30, 1982, at 88. The song was one of only two mentioned in the October 30, 1982, Billboard album review and was described as "a solid country number". The song peaked at number 65 in the week ending November 27 and remained in the chart for two more weeks, making the total run seven weeks. The song also spent seven weeks on the Cashbox Country Singles Chart, debuting on November 6, 1982, and peaking at number 61 for two weeks (December 4 and 11). ## Other versions and uses Billy Vaughn covered "Here We Go Again" on his 1967 Ode to Billy Joe instrumental album, as did Dean Martin on his 1970 album My Woman, My Woman, My Wife. Glen Campbell's version appeared on his 1971 album The Last Time I Saw Her, Eddy Arnold's on his 1972 album Lonely People, and George Strait's on his 1992 album Holding My Own. Steagall performed it with Reba McEntire on his 2007 Here We Go Again album, but she did not include it on her 2007 duets album Reba: Duets, which was released four weeks later. Their collaboration was favorably reviewed, and McEntire was said to reinvigorate this country standard by Nathalie Baret of ABQ Journal. Martin's version was 3:07, and it later appeared on compilation albums, starting with the 1996 Dean Martin Gold, Vol. 2. It has appeared on a handful of other Martin compilation albums. Campbell's version was only 2:26. Strait's version is 2:53 and appears later on his 2004 Greatest Collection at a 2:55 length. Steagall's version with McEntire (who Steagall discovered at a 1974 county fair) is 3:10. R\&B and boogie-woogie pianist and singer Little Willie Littlefield recorded a version for his 1997 album The Red One. Peters and Lee made a version of the song on their 1976 on their Serenade album. Joe Dolan produced a 1972 single of the song that he included on his 1976 album Golden Hour Of Joe Dolan Vol. 2 and several of his greatest hits albums. Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis, along with Norah Jones, performed two concerts at Lincoln Center's Rose Theatre on February 9 and 10, 2009. A 2011 live tribute album by Nelson and Marsalis featuring Jones entitled Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles was recorded on these two live dates. The album, which was released on March 29, 2011, included a track entitled "Here We Go Again". The vocals on "Here We Go Again" were performed by Jones and Nelson, while instrumental support was provided by Marsalis (trumpet), Dan Nimmer (piano), Mickey Raphael (harmonica), Walter Blanding (tenor saxophone), Carlos Henriquez (bass) and Ali Jackson (drums and percussion). The song, which had a length of 5:10, was arranged by Andy Farber and performed in a rhythm and blues 12/8 shuffle. BBC music reviewer Bill Tilland noted that Jones added her usual "style and panache" to this performance. At one concert performance, The New York Times critic Nate Chinen felt the song sounded unrehearsed. Although critique of this track is sparse, Pop Matters's Will Layman notes that the album reveals "how decisive and strong Jones sounds while singing with a truly legitimate jazz group" and how Nelson predictably "breezes through his tunes with cavalier grace". Meanwhile, he praises the professional mastery of Marsalis' quintet. Tilland also notes that on the album Marsalis' band "compensates quite adequately for occasional lacklustre vocals." George Strait's country music version was performed with the instrumental support of Joe Chemay (bass guitar), Floyd Domino (piano), Buddy Emmons (steel guitar), Steve Gibson (acoustic guitar), Johnny Gimble (fiddle), Jim Horn (saxophone, alto flute), Larrie Londin (drums), Liana Manis (background vocals), Curtis Young (background vocals), and Reggie Young (electric guitar). The album was produced by Jimmy Bowen and Strait. In 1992 Entertainment Weekly's Alanna Nash regarded the album as Strait's "most hard-core country album" up to that point in his career. Allmusic staff noted that the album held its own at the time of release against most of its competitors and has aged better than most country music albums. Ralph Novak, Lisa Shea, Eric Levin, and Craig Tomashoff of People said the album represents the most straightforward style of singing. The iTunes Store describes the album as the result of a transition in eras of country music. The song plays during the opening credit dance by Franz (Harry Baer) and Margarethe (Margarethe von Trotta) in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1970 film Gods of the Plague. However, the song was on neither the eponymous soundtrack for the 2004 film Ray nor the limited edition additional soundtrack album More Music From Ray''.

1991–92 Gillingham F.C. season

During the 1991–92 English football season, Gillingham F.C. competed in the Football League Fourth Division, the fourth tier of the English football league system. It was the 60th season in which Gillingham competed in the Football League, and the 42nd since the club was voted back into the league in 1950. The team began the season with a 4–0 victory over Scunthorpe United but their form was inconsistent; not until February did they manage to win two consecutive league games. After a season spent largely in the middle of the league table, Gillingham finished 11th out of 22 teams in the Fourth Division. Gillingham also competed in three knock-out competitions. The team were eliminated in the first round of both the FA Cup and Football League Cup. Gillingham progressed from the initial group stage of the Associate Members' Cup but lost in the first round proper. The team played a total of 51 competitive matches, winning 17, drawing 14 and losing 20, although a win and a draw were expunged when Aldershot were expelled from the Football League in March. David Crown was the team's top goalscorer, with 22 in the Fourth Division and 24 in all competitions, not including an expunged goal. Paul Clark and Steve Lovell made the most appearances, playing in every game. The highest attendance recorded at the club's home ground, Priestfield Stadium, was 7,328, for a game against Brentford in the FA Cup. ## Background and pre-season The 1991–92 season was Gillingham's 60th season playing in the Football League and the 42nd since the club was elected back into the League in 1950 after being voted out in 1938. It was the club's third consecutive season in the Football League Fourth Division, the fourth tier of the English football league system. In the previous two seasons since being relegated from the Third Division, Gillingham had finished 14th and 15th out of 24 teams. In the 1991–92 season, the Fourth Division unusually had an odd number of teams due to league expansion and re-organisation, beginning the season with 23 members. At the start of the season, Damien Richardson was the club's manager, a post he had held since April 1989. His assistant manager was fellow former Gillingham player Ron Hillyard, and Alan Walker was the team captain. Richardson signed two veteran players, both aged 32, prior to the start of the season. Karl Elsey, a midfielder who had played for Gillingham between 1985 and 1988, returned to the club on a free transfer from fellow Fourth Division team Maidstone United. Paul Clark, a defender who had played nearly 400 Football League matches, also arrived without a transfer fee, having been released by Southend United of the Second Division. The club adopted a new kit design in its traditional colours of blue and white; the shirts were plain blue, replacing the previous season's unusual design featuring diagonal white stripes, and were worn with white shorts and socks. The away kit, to be worn in the event of a clash of colours with the home team, featured black and white stripes, the first-choice colours worn when the club was formed in 1893. The team prepared for the new season with a number of friendly matches, including a 4–1 victory over a West Ham United team which included a mix of the First Division team's regular starters and reserves. Three days later, Steve Russell, goalkeeper for Gillingham's youth team, found himself in the unusual position of playing two complete games in one day; having played for the youth team in the morning, he was selected for the first team against Dover Athletic in the afternoon after Harvey Lim failed a last-minute fitness test. ## Fourth Division ### August–December Gillingham's first match of the season was at their home ground, Priestfield Stadium, against Scunthorpe United; Elsey and Clark both made their debut and Elsey scored the opening goal in a 4–0 victory. After a draw away to York City and a weekend with no scheduled game due to the uneven number of teams in the division, Gillingham lost for the first time in the league with a 2–0 defeat away to Hereford United on 4 September, finishing the game with ten men after Lee Palmer was sent off. Gillingham defeated Scarborough 2–0 on 7 September with two goals in the last six minutes of the game, after which they were 10th in the league table, but then gained only one point from the next five games to slip to 19th. The run included defeats to Wrexham, Blackpool, Crewe Alexandra and Chesterfield, although they were able to hold second-placed Barnet to a 3–3 draw. The performances of Lim in particular were questioned, so Richardson signed goalkeeper Keith Branagan on loan from Millwall, but Branagan was injured in a reserve team game and only played one match for the first team before returning to his parent club. Gillingham ended their winless league run on 12 October, beating Halifax Town 3–0; David Crown scored twice. Two weeks later Crown scored the team's first hat-trick of the season as they beat Northampton Town 3–1 at Priestfield; midfielder Neil Smith, recently signed on loan from Tottenham Hotspur, made his debut. After impressing with his performances during the loan spell, he joined the club on a permanent basis for a transfer fee of , which was reported to have been financed by the payment which the club received from Sky Sports after one of Gillingham's games was broadcast live. Gillingham extended their unbeaten league run to six games with draws against Carlisle United, Cardiff City and Maidstone United, after which they were 13th in the table. The game against Maidstone, Gillingham's local rivals, drew an attendance of 6,716, Gillingham's largest home crowd of the season for a Fourth Division match. The team's unbeaten run came to an end with a 4–3 defeat away to Mansfield Town on 23 November. Gillingham defeated Aldershot 3–1 on 30 November, ending a run of seven games without a win in all competitions, and then drew twice more, against Rotherham United and York City. Crown scored in all three matches to take his total of league goals for the season so far to 13, nearly half the total scored by the entire team. The team's final match of 1991 was on 26 December against the same opponents they had faced in the first game of the season, Scunthorpe United; Gillingham lost 2–0, which left them 15th in the league table. ### January–May Gillingham began the new year with a 2–1 victory at home to Hereford United on 1 January. The team beat Walsall 4–0 on 11 January, Crown scoring his second hat-trick of the season, but then conceded four in a defeat to promotion-chasing Burnley. A win over Doncaster Rovers on 1 February left Gillingham 13th in the table. On 15 February, the team followed two consecutive goalless draws by beating Rotherham United, who were fifth in the table, 5–1 at Priestfield; Steve Lovell scored the team's third hat-trick of the season. It was the first time that Gillingham had scored five goals in a game since September 1989. A week later, Gillingham won 1–0 away to Walsall, the first time during the season that the team had won two consecutive league matches, however their unbeaten league run ended with a 3–1 defeat at home to Lincoln City on 29 February. On 3 March, Gillingham achieved a 3–0 victory over Burnley, who had not lost for seven games and would go on to win the Fourth Division championship; Crown scored the first goal, the first of four consecutive league games in which he scored. A week later, defender Richard Green, recently signed on loan from Swindon Town, scored twice on his Gillingham debut as the team defeated Cardiff City 3–2 at Ninian Park. It would prove to be Gillingham's final league win away from home until October 1993, a run of 30 consecutive away league games without a victory. The team failed to win in the next three games but ended the month with consecutive home victories over Mansfield Town and Wrexham, which took them up to 10th in the league table. Another loan signing, Watford's Rod Thomas, made his debut against Mansfield. Three days before that game, Aldershot were expelled from the Football League after the club went into liquidation; all their results up to that point in the season were expunged from the league table, meaning that Gillingham lost the four points they had acquired from a win and a draw against Aldershot. On 11 April, Gillingham defeated Blackpool 3–2 at Priestfield despite finishing the game with nine players. Both Crown and Lim were sent off, leading to defender Joe Dunne taking over in goal; Dunne was selected because he had played Gaelic football as a youth in his native Ireland, which Richardson felt would help with his ability to catch and handle the ball. It was the team's only win in five matches played in April, during which they lost away to Scarborough and Barnet and at home to Crewe Alexandra. Gillingham's final match of the season was at home to Halifax Town. Lovell, who had scored only four league goals before Christmas, scored twice in a 2–0 victory, giving him seven in the last nine games of the season and a total of sixteen for the season. His second goal against Halifax was his 100th for the club. Gillingham finished 11th out of 22 remaining teams in the Fourth Division, 12 points below the promotion play-off places; a review of the season published in the Rothmans Football Yearbook stated that "Gillingham's consistency was simply one of being an average team in the middle of the table". ### Match details - Key - In result column, Gillingham's score shown first - H = Home match - A = Away match - pen. = Penalty kick - o.g. = Own goal - Results a. Result expunged following Aldershot's expulsion from the Football League ### Partial league table ## Cup matches ### FA Cup As a Fourth Division team, Gillingham entered the 1991–92 FA Cup in the first round and were paired with Brentford, who were top of the Third Division. The match at Brentford's Griffin Park stadium ended in a 3–3 draw after Gillingham had trailed 3–1 with less than 20 minutes remaining, necessitating a replay at Priestfield. The second match drew an attendance of 7,328, the largest recorded at Priestfield during the season. Captain Walker scored a goal, following on from two he had scored in the initial match, but Gillingham lost 3–1 and were eliminated from the competition. #### Match details - Key - In result column, Gillingham's score shown first - H = Home match - A = Away match - pen. = Penalty kick - o.g. = Own goal - Results ### Football League Cup Gillingham entered the 1991–92 Football League Cup in the first round and their opponents were Portsmouth of the Second Division. The tie was played over two legs, with the first at Portsmouth's Fratton Park ground and the second at Priestfield. Teenaged forward Peter Beadle came on as a substitute and scored for Gillingham in the first leg but his team lost 2–1. Seven days later, Portsmouth won the second leg 4–3 and thus won the tie by an aggregate score of 6–4, ending Gillingham's participation in the League Cup. #### Match details - Key - In result column, Gillingham's score shown first - H = Home match - A = Away match - pen. = Penalty kick - o.g. = Own goal - Results ### Associate Members' Cup The 1991–92 Associate Members' Cup, a tournament exclusively for Third and Fourth Division teams, began with a preliminary round in which the teams were drawn into groups of three, contested on a round-robin basis. Gillingham's group also contained their local rivals Maidstone United as well as Fulham of the Third Division. Gillingham's first match resulted in a 2–0 defeat away to Fulham; as the Third Division side had already beaten Maidstone they were now guaranteed to top the group and qualify for the first round proper, leaving the game between the two Kent-based teams to determine the second qualifier. Gillingham defeated Maidstone 4–2 in front of a crowd of 2,300, the lowest attendance at Priestfield during the season, to reach the first round. The random draw for the first round paired Gillingham with Fulham again. The game again took place at Fulham's Craven Cottage ground and the result was identical to the earlier meeting between the two sides, Fulham winning 2–0 to eliminate Gillingham from the competition. #### Match details - Key - In result column, Gillingham's score shown first - H = Home match - A = Away match - pen. = Penalty kick - o.g. = Own goal - Results ## Players Twenty-eight players made at least one appearance for Gillingham during the season. Clark and Lovell made the most; both players were ever-present during the season, playing in all 51 games, including the two which were expunged following Aldershot's expulsion from the Football League in March. Lim, O'Connor, Walker, and Crown all made more than 40 appearances. Two players, both goalkeepers, played only once during the season. Branagan made one league appearance in October and Tim Dalton played in one Associate Members' Cup game. Both left the club without making any further appearances. Thirteen players scored at least one goal for Gillingham during the season. Crown was the top goalscorer, with 22 goals in Football League matches and a total of 24 in all competitions; these figures do not include a goal which he scored against Aldershot. Lovell, the team's top scorer for the previous four seasons, scored 16; no other player scored more than 7. ## Aftermath Walker was voted into the Professional Footballers' Association Team of the Year for the Fourth Division by his fellow professionals, the first Gillingham player to be honoured in five years. He did not receive the club's player of the year award, however, which went to Clark. Several players left the club at the conclusion of the season, including Beadle, who joined Tottenham Hotspur of the Premier League for a transfer fee of , a new record for the highest fee received by Gillingham for a player. The teams in the Football League First Division, the highest level of the sport in England, broke away at the conclusion of the season to form the new FA Premier League; as a result, the Football League was reduced from four divisions to three, placing Gillingham in the new Third Division. After a mid-table finish in the 1991–92 season, Gillingham struggled the following season and, by October, the team were close to the bottom of the Third Division; Richardson was dismissed from his job as the club's manager. Glenn Roeder was appointed as his replacement in a player-manager capacity. The team's performances remained poor and, with two games remaining, Gillingham still faced the possibility of finishing bottom of the division and being relegated out of the Football League. Victory over Halifax Town in the penultimate match of the season, however, ensured that Gillingham would stay in the Third Division, and the team remained there until they gained promotion to the Second Division in 1996.

Mothers of the Disappeared

1987 song by U2

"Mothers of the Disappeared" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the eleventh and final track on their 1987 album The Joshua Tree. The song was inspired by lead singer Bono's experiences in Nicaragua and El Salvador in July 1986, following U2's participation in the Conspiracy of Hope tour of benefit concerts for Amnesty International. He learned of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a group of women whose children had "forcibly disappeared" at the hands of the Argentine and Chilean dictatorships. While in Central America, he met members of COMADRES, a similar organization whose children had been abducted by the government in El Salvador. Bono sympathized with the Madres and COMADRES and wanted to pay tribute to their cause. The song was written on a Spanish guitar, and the melody lifted from a piece Bono composed in Ethiopia in 1985 to help teach children basic forms of hygiene. The lyrics contain an implicit criticism of the Reagan Administration, which backed two South American regimes that seized power during coups d'état and which provided financial support for the military regime in El Salvador. Thematically it has been interpreted as an examination of failures and contradictions in US foreign policy. The drum beat provided by Larry Mullen Jr. was processed through an effects unit that gave it a drone-like quality, which bassist Adam Clayton described as "evocative of that sinister death squad darkness". "Mothers of the Disappeared" was favourably received by critics, who variously described it as "powerful", "a moving tribute", and containing "stunning beauty and sadness". The song was played seven times on the 1987 Joshua Tree Tour, and some recordings were considered for the ending sequence of the 1988 film Rattle and Hum. It was revived for four concerts on the 1998 PopMart Tour in South America, and for two of them, the Madres joined the band onstage for the performance, one of which was broadcast on television in Chile. Bono used the opportunity to ask former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet to reveal to the Madres the locations of their children's bodies. The song was played a further three times on the U2 360° Tour; one performance was dedicated to Fehmi Tosun, an ethnic Kurd who forcibly disappeared in Turkey in 1995. Bono re-recorded the song a cappella in 1998 for the album ¡Ni Un Paso Atras\! (). ## Inspiration, writing, and recording Recording sessions for The Joshua Tree began in January 1986 in Danesmoate House in Dublin and continued throughout the year. U2 briefly interrupted these sessions in June to join Amnesty International's A Conspiracy of Hope tour of benefit concerts. Following the first concert in San Francisco, lead singer Bono met René Castro, a Chilean mural artist. Castro had been tortured and held in a concentration camp for two years by the dictatorial Chilean government because his artwork criticised the Pinochet-led regime that seized power in 1973 during a coup d'état. Castro showed Bono a wall painting in the Mission District that depicted the ongoing plight in Chile and Argentina. He also learned of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a group of women whose children were forcibly disappeared by the Argentine government. The Madres' children were usually young people who had opposed the government during the Dirty War, and the coup d'état that brought Jorge Rafael Videla to power. The Madres joined together to campaign for information regarding the locations of their children's bodies and the circumstances of their deaths, believing them to have been kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. Inspired by the mural, Bono took an extended break from recording into July, traveling to Nicaragua and El Salvador with his wife, Alison Hewson, to see first-hand the distress of peasants bullied by political conflicts and US military intervention. While there, they worked with the Central American Mission Partners (CAMP), a human rights and economic development organization. In El Salvador they met members of the Comité de Madres Monsignor Romero (COMADRES: Committee of the Mothers Monsignor Romero), an organization of women whose children were forcibly disappeared by the Salvadoran government during the Civil War because they opposed the military regime that was in power. At one point during the trip, Bono, Alison, and a member of CAMP were shot at by government troops while on their way to deliver aid to a group of farmers. The shots were a warning and, according to author John Luerssen, the incident made Bono realize that "they didn't care for their intrusion and they could kill them if they felt compelled." In 2006, Bono recounted another experience he had in El Salvador, where he had seen a body thrown from a van into the road. He remarked, "People would just disappear. If you were part of the opposition, you might find an SUV with the windows blacked out parked outside your house.... If that didn't stop you, occasionally they would come in and take you and murder you; there would be no trial." Bono understood the cause of the Madres and COMADRES and wanted to pay tribute to it. His experiences in Central America inspired the lyrics of "Mothers of the Disappeared" and another track from The Joshua Tree, "Bullet the Blue Sky". "Mothers of the Disappeared" was created and mixed at guitarist the Edge's newly-bought home, Melbeach, which U2 used as a recording studio. Bono wrote the song on his mother-in-law's Spanish guitar; the melody came from a song that Bono wrote in Ethiopia in 1985 to teach children about basic methods of hygiene. The drums, played by Larry Mullen Jr., were lifted from another song ("One Tree Hill", as reported by engineer Dave Meegan) by producer Brian Eno and subsequently slowed down and treated with "a canyon load of reverb". The Edge added a guitar part using a Bond Electraglide guitar, which he abused to produce a sound that he liked. Producer Daniel Lanois was the principal mixer of the song. Bono, likening the studio itself to an instrument, described Lanois's mix as a "performance". At the conclusion of the lyrics sheet for the song in the liner notes of The Joshua Tree, U2 listed addresses for several branches of Amnesty International, and proceeds from the song were donated to the organization. In 1998, Bono re-recorded the song a cappella in English and Spanish for the album ¡Ni Un Paso Atras\! (), along with a recitation of the William Butler Yeats poem "The Mother of God". The album was created by the Madres in commemoration of the disappearance of their children. The tracks were also recorded for the 1999 film 20 Años... 20 Poemas... 20 Artistas (20 Years... 20 Poems... 20 Artists). ## Composition and theme "Mothers of the Disappeared" runs for 5:14 (5 minutes, 14 seconds). It is played in common time in a key of A. The song begins with the sound of rain hitting a roof, which fades in over the first fourteen seconds alongside the bass and a processed drum loop beat by Mullen which reverberates in the background. Thirty-two seconds into the song, Mullen's drums enter, playing a sporadic beat every four to five seconds. At the fifty-second mark the drums play a more regular beat, and the Edge's guitar, accompanied by Eno's synthesizer, enters. The first verse begins at 1:28, and introduces the chord progression of A₅–E₅–Fm–D–A₅, which is played in the verses. At 2:41 Eno's keyboards enter, and the song begins to follow a D–D₅–A₅ chord progression, while Bono begins falsetto vocals. The second verse then begins at 3:01. The lyrics end at 3:37, and the song returns to the chord progression of D–D₅–A₅. The harmony gradually grows in volume until 4:33, at which point the song enters into a coda; the keyboards come to a finish and the guitar returns to playing A notes before fading over the next eight seconds alongside the bass. The synthesizer, drums, and drum loop conclude the song, fading out slowly over the last thirty-one seconds. Eno used a piano as a percussive instrument and mixed the result with the drum loop through a PCM70 effects unit to create a sound that bassist Adam Clayton called "eerie and foreign and scary". Lanois stated that the processing of Mullen's beat, which resulted in a drone-like sound, became the song's backbone and personality. Clayton described it as "evocative of that sinister death squad darkness". Colm O'Hare of Hot Press felt it was "the key sonic element" because it "[evokes] an abstract sense of evil and dread". In December 1986, Bono stated that he had a love–hate relationship with America, and that this influenced his work on the album. Speaking of his encounter with COMADRES in El Salvador and their impact on the song, he said, "There's no question in my mind of the Reagan Administration's involvement in backing the regime that is committing these atrocities. I doubt if the people of America are even aware of this. It's not my position to lecture them or tell them their place or to even open their eyes up to it in a very visual way, but it is affecting me and it affects the words I write and the music we make." In 2007, Clayton said "'Mothers of the Disappeared' was not just a reflection on what had happened under the military government in Chile but also at the US which had supported that government", and described Bono's vocals as "prehistoric", saying "it connects with something very primitive." Greg Garrett, an English professor at Baylor University, saw the song as an effort to "[respond] to growing interests in doing justice—and calling to attention American failures in that regard", noting that the regimes in South America had been supported by the United States because of their anti-communist positions, even though their tactics were in opposition to the democratic values that "America claims to champion around the world". Lisa Hand of the Sunday Independent noted the influence of America on the track, remarking, "[it] does not confine itself simply to the music, but also extends to some of the lyrics. However, far from being a tribute to the star-spangled banner, the words highlight the political untruths and ambiguities which exist within the U.S. 'Mothers of the Disappeared' and 'Bullet the Blue Sky' both take a hard look at the American involvement in South America". Richard Harrington of The Washington Post described the song as "a simple lament of great beauty and sadness pleading for the realization that ideological battles about right and left obscure the more important issue of right and wrong." Author David Kootnikoff described it as a "[portrait] of the American Dream gone rancid". ## Live performances U2 debuted "Mothers of the Disappeared" on 14 April 1987 in San Diego, California, on the first leg of the Joshua Tree Tour, where it closed the concert in place of the band's long-time finale "40". It was performed three more times on the leg; twice to open the encore and once to conclude the main set. U2 revived the song seven months later on the third leg, playing it in the encore at three of the final four concerts on the tour. The final two performances were held in Tempe, Arizona on 19 and 20 December 1987 and were filmed for the 1988 film Rattle and Hum. U2 sang the refrain "el pueblo vencerá", which means "the people will overcome" in Spanish, at the conclusion of the song. Bono noted that the Madres use the phrase for motivation. The Edge said "we're so close to a Spanish speaking part of the world, we felt that maybe people at the concert might pick up on this lyric." Bono added that they had closed every concert since 1983 with the song "40", and so they were looking to replace it with "Mothers of the Disappeared" from that point on. He explained, "If the people of Arizona sing this, and if it goes into the film and onto the record, wherever we go in a way for the next few years, that will be taken up again. It'll be an interesting experiment ...". The footage was considered for the closing sequence of the film, but the band eventually decided against including it. "Pride (In the Name of Love)" was used as the final live song, and "All I Want Is You" was chosen to play over the credits. Following the seven performances on the Joshua Tree Tour, U2 did not perform "Mothers of the Disappeared" until 1998, on the fourth leg of the PopMart Tour. It was played at three concerts in Argentina and once in Chile, concluding all four shows. Bono sang "el pueblo vencerá" at the end of each performance. The first rendition was on 5 February 1998 in Buenos Aires, where it was performed with the Madres accompanying them onstage. The song was played by just Bono and the Edge and was set against footage of the Madres on the video screen. At the conclusion of the song, the band members faced the Madres and applauded, an act in which the rest of the audience joined. Part of the performance was later included on the television documentary Classic Albums: The Joshua Tree. The cost of the tickets was too high for many fans in South America, so the band broadcast the 11 February concert in Chile live on television. Knowing that many people in the country would be watching, they played "Mothers of the Disappeared" in place of "Wake Up Dead Man". The stadium in which the concert was held had been used as a prison camp by Pinochet's regime following the coup d'état. Again it was performed solely by Bono and the Edge against footage of the Madres, and they invited the women to join them onstage a second time. The Madres held up photographs of their children and spoke about them briefly during the performance, an act which received a mixed reception from the audience. Bono made a plea to Pinochet, asking him to "tell these women where are the bones of their children." "Mothers of the Disappeared" was performed again on the fourth leg of the Vertigo Tour, on 26 February 2006 in Santiago and 2 March in Buenos Aires. Although it was rehearsed by the full band, it was played only by Bono and the Edge in an arrangement similar to the one from the PopMart Tour. The Edge performed the song on a charango that Chilean President Ricardo Lagos had given to Bono earlier that day. It was played at three concerts on the third leg of the U2 360° Tour in place of "MLK". One performance in Istanbul, Turkey was dedicated to Fehmi Tosun, an ethnic Kurd who was kidnapped in October 1995 and subsequently disappeared. The abduction was witnessed by his wife and daughter; no information regarding his disappearance has ever been released. For the first time in 30 years, a full band arrangement of "Mothers of the Disappeared" returned to U2's live set for the Joshua Tree Tours 2017 and 2019. The two tours featured 51 concerts in mid-2017 and 15 concerts in late-2019, each of which featured a performance of the entire Joshua Tree album in running order. Eddie Vedder and Mumford & Sons accompanied U2 on-stage for a performance of the song during a May 2017 show in Seattle, and Patti Smith performed the song with the band in July 2017 in Paris. ## Reception "Mothers of the Disappeared" was favourably received by critics. Steve Morse of The Boston Globe called the song "powerful" and described the backing vocals as tender and choirlike. Don McLeese of the Chicago Sun-Times described it as a "hymn to human rights". Adrian Thrills of NME called it "a simple, plaintive lament of stunning beauty and sadness". Nicholas Jennings of Maclean's felt that it was The Joshua Tree's "most topical song". Music journalist Andrew Mueller felt the track was a "wilfully downbeat finale". In Rolling Stone, Steve Pond said "'Mothers of the Disappeared' is built around desolate images of loss, but the setting is soothing and restorative—music of great sadness but also of unutterable compassion, acceptance and calm." Lennox Samuels of The Dallas Morning News stated that there was "an ineffable sadness in Bono's vocals and images where 'Night hangs like a prisoner / Stretched over black and blue' ", calling it "a moving tribute" to people around the world who had lost loved ones to warfare and conflict. He added "[w]hat's remarkable about the song is that despite the intrinsic pain, it remains eerily cleansing. Even in the midst of decay and excess and horror, Bono can find hope and absolution." In 2006 Bono described it as "a beautiful end to the album", saying, "That song means as much to me as any of the songs on that album, it's right up there for me," and noting that it is a song "I'm very proud of to this day." Barbara Jaeger of The Bergen Record likened "Mothers of the Disappeared" to "New Year's Day" and "Pride (In the Name of Love)", stating that the band used all three to "stir political consciousness and to urge social commitment." Thirteen years later, Ryan Jones, in his review of U2's 2000 album All That You Can't Leave Behind for the same publication, said the song "Peace on Earth" contained echoes of "Mothers of the Disappeared" in its lyrics and the tone of the instrumental prelude. In reviewing the group's 2009 album No Line on the Horizon, Mueller said the closing "Cedars of Lebanon" "maintains this essentially optimistic group's counter-intuitive tradition of ending their albums with rueful comedowns", likening it to "Mothers of the Disappeared". McLeese believed that the song had its roots in "the folklike purity of traditional Irish music". According to Luerssen the song is "notorious" in Central and South America, and it is often "played as an act of defiance" by the Madres. Art for Amnesty cited the song, and the effect it had in spreading Amnesty International's human rights message, as one of the reasons why U2 were awarded the Ambassador of Conscience Award by the organization in 2005. Reflecting on the applause given to the Madres during the PopMart concert in Buenos Aires, the U2 magazine Propaganda called the result "about the most moving thing I've ever seen on a rock stage. It was one of those ideas that really could have gone either way, but the obvious empathy of the audience towards these women made it an unforgettable moment." Following the televised concert in Chile, Bono said "it was amazing and confounding to discover that on our most 'pop' of tours some of the best shows were in political hotspots like Santiago, Sarajevo, Tel Aviv ... anywhere music meant more than entertainment". He added "to be able to address General Pinochet from the stage on live television in Chile and say, 'Give the dead back to the living. Please, General Pinochet, tell these women where the bones of their sons and daughters are.' That was an extraordinary moment ... certainly in my life and U2's." When asked if the negative reaction from some of the audience had disappointed the band Bono said it had not, stating "it's proof to me that a rock 'n' roll audience are not lemmings.... If they don't agree with you, they will let you know – but that doesn't mean they're not fans.... I was flattered that we weren't just playing to people who agreed with us." U2's performance was later credited with inspiring a protest in the Chilean Parliament against Pinochet, who was in the process of becoming a Senator for life after relinquishing his position as head of the armed forces. The opposition party brought in the Madres, who again held pictures of their disappeared children and asked for information on the location of their bodies. "Mothers of the Disappeared" has been covered several times. The Vitamin String Quartet included it on their 2004 tribute album The String Quartet Tribute to U2's The Joshua Tree. Paddy Casey recorded a version for the tsunami relief album Even Better Than the Real Thing Vol. 3 in 2005. ## Credits and personnel U2 - Bono – lead vocals - The Edge – guitar, backing vocals - Adam Clayton – bass guitar - Larry Mullen Jr. – drums, percussion Additional performers - Brian Eno – keyboards, synthesizer Technical - Daniel Lanois – mixing - Flood – recording ## See also - "They Dance Alone" – a song by Sting that treats the same subject

Don't Say You Love Me (M2M song)

1999 single by M2M

"Don't Say You Love Me" is the debut single of M2M, a Norwegian pop duo consisting of singers Marion Raven and Marit Larsen. The song first appeared on Radio Disney before its official US radio and single release in October 1999. It was released on the soundtrack to the film Pokémon: The First Movie in November 1999 and appears in the film's closing credits. The song was featured on M2M's debut album, Shades of Purple (2000) as its opening track, and also appeared on their compilation album The Day You Went Away: The Best of M2M (2003). The song received positive reviews. Chuck Taylor from Billboard said it was "absolutely enchanting" and would appeal to both young and mature listeners. It reached number 2 in Norway, number 4 in both Australia and New Zealand, number 16 in the UK and number 21 on the US Billboard Hot 100. It was certified gold in the US and Australia and remained M2M's biggest hit. M2M performed the song on episodes of the television series One World, Top of the Pops and Disney Channel in Concert. Two similar music videos were released for the song, with one showing clips from Pokémon: The First Movie. ## Background and composition Marion Raven and Marit Larsen come from Lørenskog in the district east of Oslo, Norway. They met when they were five years old and became best friends, discovering they had similar interests in music. They began singing together and performing in musical productions. The duo released a children's album, Synger Kjente Barnesanger (Sing Famous Children's Songs), in 1996 under the band name Marit & Marion, when Larsen was 12 and Raven was 11 years old. The album was nominated for a Spellemannprisen award. After the album's release they started writing their own pop songs and sent demo recordings out; one of the demos ended up at Atlantic Records and they were signed to a worldwide contract in 1998. They held a competition for fans to come up with a new name for their duo, and one girl suggested M2M. Raven and Larsen were 14 and 15 years old, respectively, when they recorded the tracks from their debut album Shades of Purple, including their debut single, "Don't Say You Love Me". The music and lyrics were written by Raven, Larsen, Peter Zizzo and Jimmy Bralower. It was produced by Zizzo and Bralower and was mixed by Tom Lord-Alge. "Don't Say You Love Me" is performed in a 4/4 time signature at a moderately slow tempo of 100 beats per minute. Raven and Larsen alternate singing lead vocals for the first two verses, and then sing harmony together during the choruses. For most of the song, the verses are in the key of C♯ minor and the choruses are in the relative major key of E major. The final chorus has a key change to F♯ major. The song's prominent instruments are electric piano and acoustic guitar, with record scratching sounds layering the production in the chorus in a style akin to Hanson's "MMMBop". The final chorus repeats with ad-libbed background vocals until the song fades out. Lyrically, the song is about getting "the rules straight on a budding relationship: Slow down and don't say you love me until you give me some time and get to know me." According to musicologist Jon Mikkel Broch Ålvik, "Don't Say You Love Me" is the "thinking person's teen pop." Ålvik rejects a superficial interpretation that the lyrics are a "moralistic message of abstinence", arguing instead that M2M "signal a stance that sounds considered and assured rather than prudish" and that the song is a statement of "burgeoning agency." The song has been described as bubblegum pop music with similar lyrical qualities to songs by girl groups of the 1960s, while also having more influence from rock and singer-songwriter genres than was typical for other teen pop songs of the late 1990s. There is a slight difference in lyrics between the version used in Pokémon: The First Movie version and the one released on Shades of Purple. The Shades of Purple version includes the line "you start kissing me, what's that about?" In the Pokémon version, the lyric is "you said you love me, what's that about?" When asked about the lyric change in an interview, M2M replied "the Pokémon people didn't find it appropriate to have kissing in the lyrics, because it was for younger kids. We think [the lyric change] was stupid. The original version is on [Shades of Purple], and that's the one we wanted to go with." M2M had not heard of Pokémon until the song was chosen for the soundtrack, as the franchise was not yet popular in Norway. ## Release and appearances "Don't Say You Love Me" appeared in "The List", an episode in the TV series Felicity that aired in the US on 3 October 1999 and reached an audience of 5 million people, helping to generate interest in the song. On 10 October it appeared in the Jack & Jill episode "Moving On". The song was recently being played on Radio Disney before it made its commercial US debut on 26 October 1999 as a CD and Compact Cassette. In Canada, it was released on the same day. Prior to this, the track was officially serviced to US adult contemporary radio on 11 October 1999 and to mainstream pop and rhythmic radio the following day. Within a month, more than 100 US top-40 radio stations were playing the song; by 10 November it was the sixth-most requested song on New York radio stations. The song appeared during the closing credits of the film Pokémon: The First Movie and on the film's soundtrack; both the film and soundtrack were released in the US on 10 November 1999. "Don't Say You Love Me" was the debut single from the album. The single first entered the charts in the US on 20 November, by which time more than 400,000 units had already been shipped to record stores. Despite the success in the US, in November 1999 it was reported that the single would not be released in the duo's home country of Norway until the following year, as Warner Music Norway wanted to wait until both the Pokémon film and soundtrack were released in Europe to capitalise on the exposure. The single was released in Norway on radio on 24 November, and by 11 January it was on sale in Norway and 25 other countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania. It was expected to be released in the remaining European countries by the end of the month, though European countries where the single had not yet been released were already playing the song on the radio. The song was popular in Southeast Asia, receiving heavy airplay in Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore, and also in South America; in late May 2000 in Mexico it was the best selling foreign song and the second best selling song overall. On 12 January it was featured in the episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, "Tainted Love". The song was released in Japan on 25 January, in Spain on 22 February, and in the UK on 20 March on East West Records. It appeared on Shades of Purple, which was released in Europe in mid-February and the US on 7 March, and in 2003 it appeared on the album The Day You Went Away: The Best of M2M. ## Reception Robert Christgau gave a positive review, calling the song one of the "impossibly touching" tracks on Shades of Purple that "sets the standard" for the rest of the album. Chuck Taylor from Billboard said the song would appeal to both the young and mature listeners as it "neatly walks the line between pure pop and the cusp of the adult top 40". He added the song was "Absolutely enchanting in its youthful vocal and meaty series of hooks". Michael Paoletta, also from Billboard, called the song an "infectious pop rocker", adding that "what's most dazzling about the track is the vocal verve of the girls' harmonizing." Heather Phares from AllMusic referred to the song as "sweet yet down-to-earth pop". Marius Lillelien, the director of the Norwegian radio station NRK P3, said "It's a very well-written, well-produced pop song, they're young and potentially the largest Norwegian pop success ever. The song is best suited to an audience aged 10–16, but in my opinion it won't scare away older listeners". "Don't Say You Love Me" was nominated for the year's best song at the 2000 Spellemannprisen awards, though it lost to Propaganda by Briskeby. In the US, "Don't Say You Love Me" entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 72, later peaking at number 21. It also reached number 40 on both the Latin Pop Airplay and Tropical Songs charts. The single sold 39,000 copies in the week preceding 27 November, and had sold 580,000 units by May 2000. It reached number 2 in their native Norway and number 4 in both Australia and New Zealand. It made the top 10 in Finland, the top 20 in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands, the top 40 in Italy and Belgium and the top 80 in Germany, France and Switzerland. It was certified gold in the US on 6 December 1999 and in Australia in 2000. "Don't Say You Love Me" was M2M's biggest hit and is their most recognisable song. While their next single, "Mirror Mirror", was a top 40 single in Australia and Canada, and reached number 62 on the Billboard Hot 100, "Don't Say You Love Me" would remain M2M's only top-40 hit in the US, and their only hit at all in many other countries. The song has been called a one-hit wonder. While speaking favourably of the duo, in 2014 Abby Devora from MTV ranked M2M and the song at number 2 on her list "9 Girl Group One-Hit Wonders You Need To Remember Right Now". Jessica Booth from Gurl.com included the duo and song in her 2012 list "Flashback: 15 Old-School Girl Singers We Miss", calling the song "ridiculously catchy". Kaitlin Cubria from Teen.com listed the duo and song in her 2014 list of "12 forgotten girl groups from the '90s/'00s that are worth your time." In 2014, Nathan Jolly from MAX said it was "one of those few pop songs that is happiness incarnate despite being a 'back the fuck off, dude' anthem". In 2020, Taylor Swift included "Don't Say You Love Me" in a Spotify playlist of 51 songs by female artists to commemorate Women's History Month, describing all the artists she selected as "faraway mentors who taught me how music could make someone's life easier and more magical". ## Music video The accompanying music video for "Don't Say You Love Me" was directed by Nigel Dick and was filmed from 4 until 6 October 1999 at the Mission Tiki drive-in theatre in Montclair, California. In the video, Raven sings the song while she is in a car with a boy, while Larsen sings and plays the guitar in front of another car. This footage is spliced with M2M singing together at the drive-in, people dancing, the projectionist struggling with his malfunctioning equipment, and the concession stand worker who has an overflowing popcorn maker. When the popcorn stand explodes, M2M continue to perform surrounded by people as popcorn rains down. Air cannons were used to fire 200 garbage bin-sized bags of popcorn into the air to create the raining popcorn effect. In the US, the music video made its premiere on 24 October on The WB following that night's screening of 7th Heaven. It began airing on The Box and MuchMusic in early November 1999 and began airing on MTV on 15 November. Two similar versions of the video were released. In one, clips from Pokémon: The First Movie are played on the screen at the drive-in theatre. In the other version, fewer images of the screen are shown; when they are seen the Pokémon images are replaced with either clips of Raven and Larsen singing the song or words such as "M2M" and "Intermission". The Pokémon version of the video uses the edited-out lyrics, while the other one uses the album version of the song. The Pokémon version was included on the DVD of the film, while the other version was included on the bonus disc in The Day You Went Away: The Best of M2M. ## Live performances and covers To promote the single Raven and Larsen made a six-stop tour of shopping malls in the Northeastern US between 21 August and 2 October; it was their first tour under the name M2M. On 9 November 1999, the day before Pokémon: The First Movie was released, M2M performed the song live at the Warner Bros. Studio Store on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, in front of fans and a large media presence. To promote the single M2M also toured Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan before returning to Norway on 24 November. They performed the song on the episode "Band on the Run" of the TV series One World, which aired on 27 November, and on 31 March 2000 they performed it on Top of the Pops. M2M performed the song live at Walt Disney World's Epcot park on 12 February 2000. This performance was recorded and appeared on an episode of Disney Channel in Concert on 29 April, which focused on both M2M and BBMak. As their biggest hit, "Don't Say You Love Me" was a popular song during live performances. In December 2001 the song was performed as an encore, along with "Everything You Do", in front of a crowd of 4,000 at an M2M concert in Kuala Lumpur. Raven and Larsen ceased performing as M2M in 2002, and both went on to pursue solo careers; Larsen is known for performing a country music version of the song during solo performances. The Filipino acoustic pop duo Krissy & Ericka covered the song on their 2009 self-titled album. ## Track listings The European version of the single contained the B-side track The Feeling is Gone, one of three tracks recorded for Shades of Purple which were left off the US version of the album. The standard US version featured the Pokémon: The First Movie instrumental score "Mewtwo Strikes Back Suite" as the B-side. - Australian CD single 1. "Don't Say You Love Me" – 3:46 2. "If Only Tears Could Bring You Back" by Midnight Sons – 4:03 3. "Mewtwo Strikes Back Suite" – 4:51 4. Enhanced section: "Don't Say You Love Me" (music video) – 3:38 - US single 1. "Don't Say You Love Me" (film version) – 3:46 2. "Mewtwo Strikes Back Suite" – 4:51 - US maxi-CD single 1. "Don't Say You Love Me" (Tin Tin Out Remix) – 3:33 2. "Don't Say You Love Me" (Lenny Bertoldo Radio Mix) – 3:01 3. "Don't Say You Love Me" (acoustic version) – 3:15 4. "Don't Say You Love Me" (album version) – 3:46 - Japanese maxi-CD single 1. "Don't Say You Love Me" (album version) – 3:46 2. "Don't Say You Love Me" (Tin Tin Out Remix) – 3:33 3. "Don't Say You Love Me" (acoustic version) – 3:15 4. "The Feeling Is Gone" – 3:16 (non-album bonus track) 5. "Don't Say You Love Me" (karaoke version) – 4:06 - European maxi-CD single 1. "Don't Say You Love Me" (album version) – 3:46 2. "The Feeling Is Gone" – 3:16 3. "Don't Say You Love Me" (acoustic version) – 3:15 ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ## Certifications ## Release history

1st Provisional Marine Brigade

Ad hoc infantry brigade of the U.S. Marine Corps

The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was a marine brigade of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) that existed periodically from 1912 to 1950. It was an ad hoc unit formed for specific operations and not considered a "permanent" USMC unit. The brigade saw five brief activations for service over a 40-year span. First created in 1912 for duty in Cuba following the Negro Rebellion, the brigade was not activated again until 1941 when it was hastily constructed from the 6th Marine Regiment to garrison Iceland after British forces occupied the country during World War II. The brigade saw service once more in the war during the Battle of Guam in the Pacific War, conducting an amphibious landing on that island's southern sector and subduing resistance from Japanese forces. It was activated once more in a brief organizational shift after the war. The brigade was formed again in 1950 when it was hastily assembled for service in the Korean War. The brigade participated in a counterattack at Masan before reinforcing United States Army units during the Battle of Pusan Perimeter, and at the First and Second Battles of Naktong Bulge along the Naktong River. The brigade was deactivated for the last time when it was merged with the 1st Marine Division. ## Organization The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade varied in size and structure each time it was created. Headquarters and Service Company, the company comprising the headquarters staff and support personnel, was much smaller than the equivalent company in standard Marine brigades. Each iteration of the brigade was assigned provisional military police, signal and other supporting companies and platoons. This was not an uncommon practice for the United States Marine Corps (USMC), which created such ad hoc units regularly in wartime. During World War II two other provisional Marine brigades were formed, which eventually expanded into divisions. Component units varied considerably as well. In its first iteration in 1912, the brigade had only 1,200 men in two provisional regiments. When re-formed for duty in Iceland in 1941, it was based around volunteers from the 2nd Marine Division. Volunteers from the division were moved into the 6th Marine Regiment's 1st, 2nd and 3rd Battalions, and the 10th Marine Regiment's 2nd Battalion. It took 4,095 men from A Company of the 2nd Tank Battalion, A Company of the 2nd Service Battalion, and parachute and antitank platoons. For the Iceland deployment, the 5th Marine Defense Battalion was attached. In its 1944 iteration, the brigade was far larger than a standard brigade, 9,886 men, formed around the 4th Marine Regiment and the 22nd Marine Regiment, with provisional headquarters, military police, and signal companies and a provisional battalion of artillery. The 53rd Naval Construction Battalion was also assigned.(see: Seabees) The brigade's Korean War organization was a 4,725-man force based around the 5th Marine Regiment and supported by Marine Aircraft Group 33, including military police, reconnaissance and intelligence companies. The attack force included the 1st Battalion, 2nd Battalion and 3rd Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment as well as supporting companies from the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Medical Battalion, 1st Motor Transport Battalion, 1st Ordnance Battalion, 1st Service Battalion, 1st Shore Party Battalion, 1st Signal Battalion, 1st Tank Battalion, 1st Amphibian Tractor Company, and 1st Combat Service Group. In each of its iterations, the brigade was not organized as a permanent formation. Typically it was created only as a temporary front-line unit while larger United States Marine units were formed. The brigade would then merge with these to form a Marine division. The 1942 brigade merged with the 2nd Marine Division, the 1944 brigade was the basis for the formation of the new 6th Marine Division, and the 1950 brigade acted as an advance force for the newly reactivated 1st Marine Division before merging into that unit. ## History ### Cuba The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was first created in 1912 for occupation duties in Cuba. Earlier that year, the Negro Rebellion had erupted throughout Cuba among former black slaves. A 1st Provisional Marine Regiment of 450 men under Colonel Lincoln Karmany was assembled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 22 May. At the same time, a 2nd Provisional Marine Regiment of 750 men under Colonel James Mahoney assembled at Key West, Florida. The two regiments sailed for Cuba aboard the USS Prairie, with 1st Battalion, 2nd Regiment, landing at Havana and the remainder of the force at Guantanamo. There they combined to form the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade in early June under Karmany, and the United States Marines fanned out in Oriente Province, occupying 26 towns and controlling all rail traffic in the area. The Marines protected United States sugar plantations in Siboney and El Cobre until late July when the Cuban government was able to clamp down on the revolt. At that point, the Marines pulled back to Guantanamo, disbanded the brigade and returned home. #### Differentiation with other "1st Marine Brigades" A second "1st Marine Brigade" was created in 1935, serving in Cuba in 1940, before being expanded and redesignated as the 1st Marine Division in 1941. This brigade was originally created in 1913 as the 1st Advance Force Brigade. However, the 1st Advance Force Brigade, and its descendants, was not considered a "provisional" unit. The brigade served in Puerto Rico and Mexico in 1914, as well as in the Dominican Republic (1916), and maintained a permanent establishment in Haiti from 1915 until its deactivation in 1934. It was reactivated in 1935 as the 1st Brigade before redesignation as the 1st Marine Brigade. The 1935 vintage 1st Marine Brigade was considered a separate unit and it has no lineal relationship to the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade. Additionally, yet a third "1st Marine Brigade" was created in 1956, later becoming the 1st Marine Amphibious Brigade in 1985 and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade (1st MEB) in 1988. The 1st MEB is also a separate organization for purposes of lineage and shares no historical relationship with the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade. ### World War II #### Iceland During World War II, the United Kingdom launched an invasion of Iceland, as the British government feared that the neutral country could fall to an invasion by German forces, which had recently conquered Denmark. A British force consisting of 4 Royal Navy warships bloodlessly occupied the country, as the Icelandic government did not resist the invasion. After the United States entered the war, Iceland signed a defence agreement with the American government allowing U.S. forces to be stationed on the island as part of the Allied occupational garrison. The USMC hastily assembled the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade in Charleston, South Carolina, to move to Iceland as part of the agreement. The brigade was first activated on 14 July 1941. Its elements were taken from the 2nd Marine Division, which was training at Marine Corps Base San Diego and Camp Elliott, both in San Diego, California. This brought the force up to a strength of 4,095 men. They were the first of 28,000 men occupying Iceland under Major General Holland M. Smith and his 1st Marine Division. While the 1st Marine Division was building its forces, though, the Provisional Brigade would hold Iceland. However, priorities soon changed and the 1st Marine Division was moved elsewhere. The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was instead joined by units of the United States Army. Under the command of Brigadier General John Marston and Colonel Leo D. Hermle, the brigade sailed from San Diego to Charleston aboard the attack transports USS Heywood, USS Fuller, and USS William P. Biddle. There, they met with additional ships which sailed with their supplies as well as the remaining elements of the brigade, the 5th Defense Battalion. These elements were joined by the USS Orizaba, USS Arcturus, and USS Hamul on 27 June. They were escorted by Task Force 19, a fleet of 25 United States Navy warships including the battleships USS Arkansas and USS New York as well as the cruisers USS Brooklyn and USS Nashville. The force stopped at Newfoundland, before continuing to Iceland, landing in Reykjavík on 7 July. There they relieved the British Army 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division of control of some areas of the country, while the British continued to administer the remainder. The British commanders distributed the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade throughout camps around the Reykjavik area, to act as an emergency force which could quickly counter any German invasion. The British gave their division patch to the brigade, and it was worn for the remainder of the Marines' time in Iceland. The Marines were joined by units of the U.S. Army and Army Air Corps in August 1941. The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade troops spent much of their time in Iceland building infrastructure and bases to fortify Iceland against potential German attack. On 22 September, the British division departed Iceland and command was assumed by the United States Army. During the winter of 1941–1942 the brigade saw no combat and spent much of its time attempting to construct fortifications and drill for combat, hampered by a lack of supplies, communications equipment, transportation, and good weather. Aside from the occasional German reconnaissance aircraft, no German forces came to Iceland. Following the 7 December attack on Pearl Harbor, the men were informed they would be redeployed from Iceland at the beginning of 1942 and would likely see combat in the Pacific Theatre. In January 1942, the brigade began deploying back to the United States, one battalion at a time. Elements of the brigade were gradually relieved by Army units and returned to New York City aboard the USS McCawley and the US Army Transport Borinquen until March 1942, when the entire brigade was in New York. The brigade was disbanded in New York City on 25 March 1942, and its component elements were reassigned to the 2nd Marine Division. Most of them were immediately dispatched to California and by the end of the year most of the Marines had been transferred to units fighting in the Guadalcanal Campaign. #### Guam On 18 April 1944, the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was again activated, this time at Guadalcanal, and placed in reserve for a time, commanded by Brigadier General Lemuel C. Shepherd. In July, it was moved to the Marshall Islands for a planned invasion of Guam, an island under the control of the Empire of Japan. This much larger brigade was built around the 4th and 22nd Marine Regiments with supporting units, and comprised 9,886 Marines. The brigade was assigned to III Amphibious Corps, a force almost 67,000 strong, in anticipation of a 15 July invasion of Guam's southern beaches, in conjunction with a northern landing by the Army's 4,500-man 305th Infantry Regiment, 77th Infantry Division. The brigade commenced training at Guadalcanal in conjunction with the 3rd Marine Division. Then, in early July, the two formations staged through the Eniwetok Atoll in preparation for the invasion. On 21 July at 08:32 the 22nd Marines landed on beaches around Agat while the 4th Marines landed at Bangi Point to the north. Opposing the U.S. landings were 22,000 Japanese troops stationed on the island. The most intense fighting struck the other units of III Amphibious Corps to the north, which held through heavy Japanese counterattacks. The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade encountered lighter resistance on the southern beaches, but nonetheless fought a substantial Japanese force occupying Gaan Point, between the two regiments' landing zones. Japanese defenders had built fortifications into the point, including Type 41 75 mm Mountain Guns which had gone undetected in U.S. reconnaissance probes, using them to pin down 20 amphibious vehicles supporting the 22nd Marines and slow their advance. The 22nd Marines subsequently spent most of the day capturing the point against stiff Japanese resistance. Their 1st Battalion was eventually able to capture Agat, and the 2nd Battalion took Mount Alifan, 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) inland. In the meantime, the 1st Battalion of the 4th Marines took Bangi point with support from their 3rd Battalion. They then began an advance to Mount Alifan but were delayed by fierce Japanese resistance inland. At nightfall the Japanese mounted a large, coordinated counterattack which was unsuccessful. By the end of the day, the 4th and 22nd Marines were holding positions 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) into the island along a 4,500-metre (14,800 ft) front. The 305th Regimental Combat Team supported the Marines for several days before rejoining the rest of the 77th Infantry Division to the north. The 1st Brigade was 7 miles (11 km) south of the 3rd Marine Division and 77th Infantry Division landing zones to the north at Asan. On 25 July, the two forces cut off Orote Peninsula between the two landing zones, and the brigade turned west and cleared the peninsula until 29 July against heavier resistance, killing some 2,500 Japanese. It advanced north in a sweeping motion with the 4th Marines on the right, west flank and the 22nd Marines on the left, east flank, until reaching the forces on the northern beach landings. By 28 July, the 3rd Marine Division and 77th Infantry Division had formed a continuous flank and were advancing north. On 6 August, the brigade joined them on the left, western flank. Here, Japanese forces staged last stands in their remaining fortifications, and holdouts on Mount Santa Rosa were cleared on 8 August, Ritidian Point on August 10, and Pati Point the same day. The island was declared "officially" secure at 11:31 on 10 August, after 11,000 Japanese dead had been counted. However, thousands of Japanese troops fled to the woods of Guam after the fight, and mop-up operations continued long after the island was declared secure. By V-J Day, the island had cost the Japanese 18,400 killed and 1,250 captured, and the Americans 1,700 killed and 6,000 injured. The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, however, only assisted in mop-up operations for a month. The 4th Marines moved along the north coast while the 22nd Marines patrolled inland to the south. On 9 September 1944, the brigade was disbanded and its elements were moved to Guadalcanal where the new 6th Marine Division was forming. That division was activated on 25 September 1944. Most of the Provisional Marine Brigade units were transferred to the command of the 6th Marine Division. The 29th Marine Regiment was added to form the division. The 53rd CB was the directly assigned to III Amphibious Corps. ### After the war The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was briefly re-formed in the post-war era on 1 June 1947, by enlarging the 1st Battalion, 11th Marines. The force served as a contingency force for the Pacific Ocean area, based in Camp Witek, Guam. However, as post-war military spending was drastically cut, the brigade at this time was far undermanned, and considered only a "paper unit". It was again "downsized" and re-designated the 1st Provisional Artillery Battalion on 1 October 1947. ### Korean War The USMC, which had been drastically reduced in size after World War II, was unprepared at the outset of the Korean War on 25 June 1950. The Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered the Marine Corps to ready a 15,000-man division for duty in Korea as a part of the United Nations Command being created there. The Marine Corps began rebuilding the 1st Marine Division to wartime strength, but in the meantime assembled a 4,725-man force around the 5th Marine Regiment to assist in the war effort as quickly as possible. On 7 July the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was reactivated in California. One week later it sailed from Long Beach and San Diego. The regiment, which had originally been slated for landing in Japan, bypassed that country and landed at Pusan in South Korea on 3 August. As it sailed to Korea, it was put under the command of Brigadier General Edward A. Craig, who met the brigade in-country. The brigade was supported by Marine Aircraft Group 33, and became a subordinate unit of the Eighth United States Army under Lieutenant General Walton Walker, who placed it in his reserve. #### Task Force Kean The brigade was immediately moved to Masan, the westernmost flank of the Pusan Perimeter, which the Eighth Army had set up to resist the North Korean Army which was attempting to overrun the UN forces. The brigade joined the U.S. 25th Infantry Division and the 5th Regimental Combat Team, under Major General William B. Kean. The three units together formed "Task Force Kean", a formation of about 20,000 men. General Walker and the Eighth Army began preparing a counteroffensive, the first conducted by the UN in the war, for 6 August. It would kick off with an attack by the U.S. reserve units on the Masan area to secure Chinju from the North Korean 6th Division, followed by a larger general push to the Kum River in the middle of the month. One of Walker's goals was to break up a suspected massing of North Korean troops near Taegu by forcing the diversion of some North Korean units southward. On 6 August, the Eighth Army issued the operational directive for the attack by the task force. The plan of attack was to move west from positions held near Masan, seize the Chinju Pass, and secure the line as far as the Nam River, and depended on the arrival of the entire U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, as well as three more battalions of American tanks which were en route from the United States. Task Force Kean kicked off its attack on 7 August, moving out from Masan. The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade surged forward to Pansong, quickly inflicting 350 casualties on the North Koreans as it overran the North Korean 6th Division's headquarters. The other units of the Task Force, however, were slowed by North Korean resistance. Task Force Kean pressed on the Chindong-ni area, resulting in a confused battle where the fragmented force had to rely on air strikes and airdrops to keep it effective. Task Force Kean's offensive had collided with one being delivered simultaneously by the North Korean 6th Division. Heavy fighting continued in the area for three days. By 9 August, Task Force Kean was poised to retake Chinju. The task force, aided by air power, initially advanced quickly though North Korean resistance was heavy. On 10 August, the Marines picked up the advance, inadvertently encountering the North Korean 83rd Motorized Regiment of the 105th Armored Division, which was caught off-guard and attempted to withdraw. F4U Corsairs from the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing strafed the retreating column repeatedly, inflicting 200 casualties and destroying about 100 of the regiment's equipment vehicles, but 1st Provisional Marine Brigade forces were not able to follow up the attack, as they were redeployed elsewhere on the perimeter on 12 August. Task Force Kean continued forward, supported by field artillery, capturing the area around Chondong-ni. At that time, Eighth Army requested several of its units to redeploy to Taegu to be used elsewhere on the front, particularly at the Naktong Bulge. At the end of the counteroffensive on 14 August, Task Force Kean had failed in its two objectives of diverting North Korean troops from the north and reaching the Chinju pass. The NK 6th Division had been reduced to 3,000 or 4,000 and had to replenish its ranks with South Korean conscripts from Andong. Fighting in the region continued for the rest of the month. #### First Naktong Bulge Immediately north on the line, the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was desperately needed to break a stalemate between the U.S. 24th Infantry Division and the NK 4th Division. Beginning at midnight on the night of 5–6 August, North Koreans had begun crossing the Naktong River at the Ohang ferry site, 3.5 miles (5.6 km) south of Pugong-ni and west of Yongsan, carrying light weapons and supplies over their heads or on rafts. At 02:00 on the morning of 6 August, the North Koreans began engaging the 3rd Battalion, U.S. 34th Infantry Regiment, and moved forward after a short fight, attempting to penetrate the lines to Yongsan. The North Korean infantry forced the 3rd Battalion back, and the battalion abandoned its command post to consolidate its positions. The North Koreans surprised the Americans, who had been expecting an attack from further north, and captured a large amount of American equipment. The attack threatened to split the American lines and disrupt supply lines to the north. Repeated American attacks resulted in a stalemate. By the morning of 7 August, North Koreans were able to press forward and capture the Cloverleaf Hill and Oblong-ni Ridge, critical terrain astride the main road in the bulge area. By 16:00 that day, the U.S. 9th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, a newly arrived unit, was sent to the region. 24th Infantry Division commander Major General John H. Church immediately ordered it to attack the Naktong Bulge salient. Despite a tenacious attack, the 9th Infantry was only able to regain part of Cloverleaf Hill before intense fighting stalled its movement. The NK 4th Division had in the meantime constructed underwater bridges of sandbags, logs and rocks, finishing the first one the day before. It moved trucks and heavy artillery across the river over this bridge, as well as additional infantry and a few tanks. By the morning of 10 August close to two full North Korean regiments were across the river and occupying fortified positions. After a series of unsuccessful counterattacks, the threat to Yongsan necessitated more U.S. reinforcements. As U.S. casualties mounted, a frustrated Walker ordered the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade to the area. They mounted a massive offensive on Cloverleaf Hill and Obong-ni beginning at 08:00 on 17 August, unleashing all available heavy weapons: artillery, mortars, M26 Pershing tanks, and airstrikes. At first, tenacious North Korean defense halted the Marines. Heavy indirect fire forced the North Koreans out of their positions before the Marines and Task Force Hill overwhelmed them, one hill at a time. The Marines approached Obong-ni first, destroying resistance on the slope with an airstrike and a barrage from U.S. tanks, but strong resistance caused heavy casualties, and they had to withdraw. The 18th North Korean Regiment, in control of the hill, mounted a disastrous counterattack in hopes of pushing the Marines back. The division's previously successful tactics of cutting off supplies and relying on surprise failed in the face of massive U.S. numerical superiority. By nightfall on 18 August, the North Korean 4th Division had been annihilated; huge numbers of deserters had weakened its numbers during the fight, but by that time, Obong-ni and Cloverleaf Hill had been retaken by the U.S. forces. Scattered groups of North Korean soldiers fled back across the Naktong, pursued by American planes and artillery fire. The next day, the remains of 4th Division had withdrawn across the river. In their hasty retreat, they left a large number of artillery pieces and equipment behind which the Americans later pressed into service. The battle caused heavy casualties for both sides. By the end of the fight, the NK 4th Division had only 300 or 400 men in each of its regiments. Of its original 7,000 men, the division now had a strength of only 3,500, having suffered over 1,200 killed. Several thousand members of the division deserted during the fight. Most of these men were South Korean civilians forcibly conscripted into the North Korean army. The NK 4th Division would not recover until much later in the war. The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade reported 66 Marines dead, 278 wounded, and one missing. In total, American forces suffered around 1,800 casualties during the battle, with about a third of those killed. #### Second Naktong Bulge By 1 September, the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was down to 4,290 men, having suffered 500 casualties in its month of Korean service, and was preparing to move back to Pusan to evacuate to Japan. There, the brigade was to join with Marine reinforcements to re-form the 1st Marine Division, which would then be a part of X Corps for a counterattack at Inchon. However, the North Korean Great Naktong Offensive delayed these plans, as the brigade was needed to repel one more North Korean crossing of the Naktong River. At the same time, the 1st and 2nd Regiments of the NK 9th Division, in their first offensive of the war, stood only a few miles short of Yongsan after a successful river crossing and penetration of the American line. Division commander Major General Pak Kyo Sam felt the chances of capturing Yongsan were strong. On the morning of 1 September, with only the shattered remnants its E Company at hand, the U.S. 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, had virtually no troops to defend Yongsan. Division commander Major General Lawrence B. Keiser formed ad hoc units from his support troops but they were not enough to counter the North Korean attack. On 2 September, Walker spoke by telephone with Major General Doyle O. Hickey, Deputy Chief of Staff, Far East Command, in Tokyo. He described the situation around the Perimeter and said the most serious threat was along the boundary between the U.S. 2nd and 25th Infantry Divisions. He said he had started the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade toward Yongsan but had not yet released them for commitment there and he wanted to be sure that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur approved his use of them, since he knew that this would interfere with other plans of the Far East Command. Walker said he did not think he could restore the 2nd Division lines without using them. Hickey replied that MacArthur had the day before approved the use of the Marines if and when Walker considered it necessary. A few hours after this conversation, at 13:15, Walker attached the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade to the U.S. 2nd Division and ordered a coordinated attack by all available elements of the division and the Marines, with the mission of destroying the North Koreans east of the Naktong River in the 2nd Division sector and of restoring the river line. The Marines were to be released from 2nd Division control as soon as this mission was accomplished. #### Counteroffensives A conference was held that afternoon at the U.S. 2nd Division command post, attended by leaders of the U.S. Eighth Army, 2nd Division, and 1st Provisional Marine Brigade. A decision was reached that the Marines would attack west at 08:00 on 3 September astride the Yongsan–Naktong River road, and U.S. Army troops would attack northwest above the Marines and attempt to re-establish contact with the U.S. 23rd Infantry, while the 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion with remnants of the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry, and elements of the 72nd Tank Battalion would attack on the left flank, or south, of the Marines to reestablish contact with the 25th Division. The troops holding this line on the first hills west of Yongsan were G Company, 9th Infantry, north of the road running west through Kogan-ni to the Naktong; A Company, 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion, southward across the road; and, below the engineers, F Company, 9th Infantry. Between 03:00 and 04:30 on 3 September, the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade moved to forward assembly areas. The 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, assembled north of Yongsan, the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, south of it. The 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, established security positions southwest of Yongsan along the approaches into the regimental sector from that direction. Fighting began the night of 2 September, and at dawn on 3 September, U.S. troops gained the high ground which was part of the designated Marine line of departure. With help from Marine tank fire, G Company overcame heavy resistance, but this early morning battle for the line of departure delayed the planned attack. The Marine attack started at 08:55 toward North Korean-held high ground 0.5 miles (0.80 km) westward. The 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, south of the east–west road, gained its objective when North Korean soldiers broke under air attack. Air strikes, artillery concentrations, and machine gun and rifle fire of the 1st Battalion now caught North Korean reinforcements in open rice paddies moving up from the second ridge and killed most of them. In the afternoon, the 1st Battalion advanced to Hill 91. North of the road the 2nd Battalion had a harder time, encountering heavy North Korean fire when it reached the northern tip of Hill 116, 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Yongsan. The North Koreans held the hill during the day, and at night D Company of the 5th Marines was isolated there. In the fighting west of Yongsan, Marine armor knocked out four T-34 tanks, and North Korean crew members abandoned a fifth. That night the Marines dug in on a line 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Yongsan. The 2nd Battalion had lost 18 killed and 77 wounded during the day, most of them in D Company. Total Marine casualties for 3 September were 34 killed and 157 wounded. Coordinating its attack with that of the Marines, the 9th Infantry advanced abreast of them on the north. Just before midnight, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, received orders to pass through the 2nd Battalion and continue the attack in the morning. That night torrential rains made the troops miserable. The North Koreans were unusually quiet and launched few patrols or attacks. The morning of 4 September, the weather was clear. The counterattack continued at 08:00 on 4 September, at first against little opposition. North of the road the 2nd Battalion quickly completed occupation of Hill 116, from which the North Koreans had withdrawn during the night. South of the road the 1st Battalion occupied what appeared to be a command post of the NK 9th Division. Tents were still up and equipment lay scattered about. Two abandoned T-34 tanks in excellent condition stood there. Tanks and ground troops advancing along the road found it littered with North Korean dead and destroyed and abandoned equipment. By nightfall the counterattack had gained another 3 miles (4.8 km). That morning, 5 September, after a 10-minute artillery preparation, the American troops moved out in their third day of counterattack. It was a day of rain. As the attack progressed, the Marines approached Obong-ni Ridge and the 9th Infantry neared Cloverleaf Hill where they had fought tenaciously during the First Battle of Naktong Bulge the month before. There, at midmorning, on the high ground ahead, they could see North Korean troops digging in. The Marines approached the pass between the two hills and took positions in front of the North Korean-held high ground. At 14:30 approximately 300 North Korean infantry came from the village of Tugok and concealed positions, striking B Company on Hill 125 just north of the road and east of Tugok. Two T-34 tanks surprised and knocked out the two leading Marine M26 Pershing tanks. Since the destroyed Pershing tanks blocked fields of fire, four others withdrew to better positions. Assault teams of B Company and the 1st Battalion with 3.5-inch rocket launchers rushed into action, took the tanks under fire, and destroyed both of them, as well as an armored personnel carrier following behind. The North Korean infantry attack was brutal and inflicted 25 casualties on B Company before reinforcements from A Company and supporting Army artillery and the Marine 81 mm mortars helped repel it. September 5 was a day of heavy casualties everywhere on the Pusan Perimeter. Army units had 102 killed, 430 wounded, and 587 missing in action for a total of 1,119 casualties. Marine units had 35 killed, 91 wounded, and none missing in action, for a total of 126 battle casualties. Total American battle casualties for the day were 1,245 men. The American counteroffensive of 3–5 September west of Yongsan resulted in one of the bloodiest and most terrifying debacles of the war for a North Korean division, according to historians. Even though remnants of the NK 9th Division, supported by the low strength NK 4th Division, still held Obong-ni Ridge, Cloverleaf Hill, and the intervening ground back to the Naktong on 6 September, the division's offensive strength had been spent at the end of the American counterattack. The NK 9th and 4th divisions were not able to resume the offensive. #### Deactivation During the previous night, at 20:00 on 4 September, Walker had ordered the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade released from operational control of the 2nd Division effective at midnight, 5 September. At 00:15, 6 September, the Marines began leaving their lines at Obong-ni Ridge heading for Pusan. They would join the 1st Marine Regiment and 7th Marine Regiment to form the new 1st Marine Division. Walker had protested in vain against releasing the brigade, believing he needed it and all the troops then in Korea if he were to stop the North Korean offensive against the Pusan Perimeter. The order prompted a heated disagreement between Walker's command and MacArthur's command. Walker said he could not hold the Pusan Perimeter without the Marines in reserve, while MacArthur said he could not conduct the Inchon landings without the Marines. MacArthur responded by assigning two newly arrived units of the 3rd Infantry Division, the 17th Infantry Regiment and the 65th Infantry Regiment to Walker's reserves. Walker did not feel the inexperienced troops would be effective, and believed the transition endangered the Pusan Perimeter at a time when it was unclear if it could hold back the North Koreans. The brigade moved to Japan and merged with the 1st Marine Division. It was deactivated as an independent unit for the last time on 13 September 1950. ### Other "1st Marine Brigades" The original "1st Marine Brigade" was the 1st Advance Base Brigade, established in 1913. It was redesignated as the "1st Brigade" in 1914, and in 1935 as the 1st Marine Brigade, FMF. In 1941, the 1st Marine Brigade was redesignated as the 1st Marine Division. A new permanent Marine brigade, designated as the 1st Marine Brigade was formed in Hawaii in 1956. In 1985, it was redesignated as the 1st Marine Amphibious Brigade (1st MAB), and in 1988 as the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade. As this brigade had relation to the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, it did not assume its lineage. ## Unit awards Though not considered a "permanent" unit, the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was awarded campaign streamers for each of its missions, creating a lineage for the unit. Those streamers include:

Typhoon Tip

Pacific typhoon in 1979

Typhoon Tip, known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Warling, was an exceptionally large, extremely powerful, and long-lived tropical cyclone that traversed the Western Pacific for 20 days, shattering multiple records worldwide. The forty-third tropical depression, nineteenth tropical storm, twelfth typhoon, and third super typhoon of the 1979 Pacific typhoon season, Tip developed out of a disturbance within the monsoon trough on October 4 near Pohnpei in Micronesia. Initially, Tropical Storm Roger to the northwest hindered the development and motion of Tip, though after the storm tracked farther north, Tip was able to intensify. After passing Guam, Tip rapidly intensified and reached peak sustained winds of 305 km/h (190 mph) and a worldwide record-low sea-level pressure of 870 hPa (25.69 inHg) on October 12. At its peak intensity, Tip was the largest tropical cyclone on record, with a wind diameter of 2,220 km (1,380 mi). Tip slowly weakened as it continued west-northwestward and later turned to the northeast, in response to an approaching trough. The typhoon made landfall in southern Japan on October 19, and became an extratropical cyclone shortly thereafter. Tip's extratropical remnants continued moving east-northeastward, until they dissipated near the Aleutian Islands on October 24. U.S. Air Force aircraft flew 60 weather reconnaissance missions into the typhoon, making Tip one of the most closely observed tropical cyclones. Rainfall from Tip indirectly led to a fire that killed 13 United States Marines and injured 68 at Combined Arms Training Center, Camp Fuji in the Shizuoka Prefecture of Japan. Elsewhere in the country, the typhoon caused widespread flooding and 42 deaths; offshore shipwrecks left 44 people killed or missing. ## Meteorological history At the end of September 1979, three circulations developed within the monsoon trough that extended from the Philippines to the Marshall Islands. The westernmost disturbance developed into a tropical depression on October 1, to the west of Luzon, which would later become Typhoon Sarah on October 7. On October 3, the disturbance southwest of Guam developed into Tropical Storm Roger, and later on the same day, a third tropical disturbance that would later become Typhoon Tip formed south of Pohnpei. Strong flow from across the equator was drawn into Roger's wind circulation, initially preventing significant development of the precursor disturbance to Tip. Despite the unfavorable air pattern, the tropical disturbance gradually organized as it moved westward. Due to the large-scale circulation pattern of Tropical Storm Roger, Tip's precursor moved erratically and slowly executed a cyclonic loop to the southeast of Chuuk. A reconnaissance aircraft flight into the system late on October 4 confirmed the existence of a closed low-level circulation, and early on October 5, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) issued its first warning on Tropical Depression Twenty-Three-W. While executing another loop near Chuuk, the tropical depression intensified into Tropical Storm Tip, though the storm failed to organize significantly due to the influence of Tropical Storm Roger. Reconnaissance aircraft provided the track of the surface circulation, since satellite imagery estimated the center was about 60 km (37 mi) from its true position. After drifting erratically for several days, Tip began a steady northwest motion on October 8. By that time, Tropical Storm Roger had become an extratropical cyclone, resulting in the southerly flow to be entrained into Tip. An area of a tropical upper tropospheric trough moved north of Guam at the time, providing an excellent outflow channel north of Tip. Initially, Tip was predicted to continue northwestward and make landfall on Guam, though instead, it turned to the west early on October 9, passing about 45 km (28 mi) south of Guam. Later that day, Tip intensified to attain typhoon status. Owing to very favorable conditions for development, Typhoon Tip rapidly intensified over the open waters of the western Pacific Ocean. Late on October 10, Tip attained wind speeds equal to Category 4 strength on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale (SSHS), and it became a super typhoon on the next day. The central pressure dropped by 92 hPa (2.72 inHg) from October 9 to 11, during which the circulation pattern of Typhoon Tip expanded to a record diameter of 2,220 km (1,380 mi). Tip continued to intensify further, becoming a Category 5-equivalent super typhoon, and early on October 12, reconnaissance aircraft recorded a worldwide record-low pressure of 870 mbar (870.0 hPa; 25.69 inHg) with 1-minute sustained winds of 305 km/h (190 mph), when Tip was located about 840 km (520 mi) west-northwest of Guam. In its best track, the Japan Meteorological Agency listed Tip as peaking with 10-minute sustained winds of 160 mph (260 km/h). At the time of its peak strength, its eye was 15 km (9.3 mi) wide. Tip crossed the 135th meridian east on the afternoon of October 13, prompting the PAGASA to issue warnings on Typhoon Tip, assigning it the local name Warling. After peaking in intensity, Tip weakened to 230 km/h (145 mph) and remained at that intensity for several days, as it continued west-northwestward. For five days after its peak strength, the average radius of winds stronger than 55 km/h (35 mph) extended over 1,100 km (684 mi). On October 17, Tip began to weaken steadily and decrease in size, recurving northeastward under the influence of a mid-level trough the next day. After passing about 65 km (40 mi) east of Okinawa, the typhoon accelerated to 75 km/h (45 mph). Tip made landfall on the Japanese island of Honshū with winds of about 130 km/h (80 mph) on October 19. It continued rapidly northeastward through the country and became an extratropical cyclone over northern Honshū a few hours after moving ashore. The extratropical remnant of Tip proceeded east-northeastward and gradually weakened, crossing the International Date Line on October 22. The storm was last observed near the Aleutian Islands of Alaska on October 24. ## Impact The typhoon produced heavy rainfall early in its lifetime while passing near Guam, including a total of 231 mm (9.1 in) at Andersen Air Force Base. Gusts of 125 km/h (80 mph) were measured during October 9 at the Naval Base Guam, as the center of the storm was positioned 70 km (43 mi) south of Agana. Tip caused a total loss of nearly US$1.6 million (1979 USD, US$6.93 million in 2024) across Guam. The outer rainbands of the large circulation of Tip produced moderate rainfall in the mountainous regions of the Philippine islands of Luzon and Visayas. Heavy rainfall from the typhoon breached a flood-retaining wall at Camp Fuji, a training facility for the United States Marine Corps near Yokosuka. Marines inside the camp weathered the storm inside huts situated at the base of a hill which housed a fuel farm. The breach led to hoses being dislodged from two rubber storage bladders, releasing large quantities of fuel. The fuel flowed down the hill and was ignited by a heater used to warm one of the huts. The resultant fire killed 13 Marines, injured 68, and caused moderate damage to the facility. The facility's barracks were destroyed, along with fifteen huts and several other structures. The barracks were rebuilt, and a memorial was established for those who lost their lives in the fire. During recurvature, Typhoon Tip passed about 65 km (40 mi) east of Okinawa. Sustained winds reached 72 km/h (45 mph), with gusts to 112 km/h (70 mph). Sustained wind velocities in Japan are not known, though they were estimated at minimal typhoon strength. The passage of the typhoon through the region resulted in millions of dollars in damage to the agricultural and fishing industries of the country. Eight ships were grounded or sunk by Tip, leaving 44 fishermen dead or unaccounted for. A Chinese freighter broke in half as a result of the typhoon, though its crew of 46 were rescued. The rainfall led to over 600 mudslides throughout the mountainous regions of Japan and flooded more than 22,000 homes; 42 people died throughout the country, with another 71 missing and 283 injured. River embankments broke in 70 places, destroying 27 bridges, while about 105 dikes were destroyed. Following the storm, at least 11,000 people were left homeless. Tip destroyed apple, rice, peach and other crops. Five ships sank in heavy seas off the coast and 50-story buildings swayed in the capital, Tokyo. Transportation in the country was disrupted; 200 trains and 160 domestic flights were canceled. In total, damages associated with Tip in Japan were estimated as billion (US$482.34 million in 1979 USD, US$2.09 billion in 2024). Tip was described as the most severe storm to strike Japan in 13 years. ## Records and meteorological statistics Typhoon Tip was the largest tropical cyclone on record, with a diameter of 1,380 mi (2,220 km)—almost double the previous record of 700 mi (1,130 km) in diameter set by Typhoon Marge in August 1951. At its largest, Tip was nearly half the size of the contiguous United States. The temperature inside the eye of Typhoon Tip at peak intensity was 30 °C (86 °F) and described as exceptionally high. With 10-minute sustained winds of 160 mph (260 km/h), Typhoon Tip is the strongest cyclone in the complete tropical cyclone listing by the Japan Meteorological Agency. The typhoon was also the most intense tropical cyclone on record, with a pressure of 870 mbar (25.69 inHg), 5 mbar (0.15 inHg) lower than the previous record set by Super Typhoon June in 1975. The records set by Tip still technically stand, though with the end of routine reconnaissance aircraft flights in the western Pacific Ocean in August 1987, modern researchers have questioned whether Tip indeed remains the strongest. After a detailed study, three researchers determined that two typhoons, Angela in 1995 and Gay in 1992, registered higher Dvorak numbers than Tip, and concluded that one or both of the two may have therefore been more intense. Other recent storms may have also been more intense than Tip at its peak; for instance, satellite-derived intensity estimates for Typhoon Haiyan of 2013 indicated that its core pressure may have been as low as 858 mbar (25.34 inHg). Due to the dearth of direct observations and Hurricane hunters into these cyclones, conclusive data is lacking. In October 2015, Hurricane Patricia reached an estimated peak intensity of 872 millibars (25.8 inHg), with maximum 1-minute sustained winds of 345 km/h (215 mph), making Patricia the second-most intense tropical cyclone recorded worldwide. However, the NHC noted in their report on the cyclone that Patricia may have surpassed Tip at the time of its peak intensity, as it was undergoing rapid intensification; however, due to the lack of direct aircraft observations at the time of the storm's peak, this possibility cannot be determined. Despite the typhoon's intensity and damage, the name Tip was not retired and was reused in 1983, 1986, and 1989. The name was discontinued from further use in 1989, when the JTWC changed their naming list. ## See also - List of tropical cyclone records - Other notable tropical cyclones that broke records: - Cyclone Mahina (1899) – Possibly the most intense storm recorded in the Southern Hemisphere, with a peak low pressure of 880 hPa (25.99 inHg) - Typhoon Nancy (1961) - An extremely powerful typhoon that unofficially had the strongest winds ever recorded in a typhoon, with maximum 1-minute sustained winds at 215 mph (346 km/h), tying Hurricane Patricia - Tropical Storm Marco (2008) – The smallest tropical cyclone on record - Hurricane Patricia (2015) – Second-most intense tropical cyclone, most intense ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere, with the highest maximum 1-minute sustained winds recorded in a tropical cyclone, at 215 mph (346 km/h) - Cyclone Winston (2016) - Officially the most intense storm in the Southern Hemisphere, with peak low pressure of 884 hPa (26.10 inHg). Also became the most intense landfalling tropical cyclone on record, impacting with same pressure - Typhoon Goni (2020) – A Category 5-equivalent super typhoon that became the strongest landfalling storm on record, with 1-minute sustained winds of 195 mph (314 km/h) - Typhoon Haiyan (2013) - The deadliest Philippine typhoon in modern history - Cyclone Freddy (2023) - The longest lasting tropical cyclone ever recorded. - Other notable tropical cyclones that impacted Japan: - Typhoon Vera (1959) - The strongest storm to ever impact Japan, with maximum sustained wind speeds of 160 mph (260 km/h) upon landfall - Comparable to a Category 5-equivalent super typhoon - Typhoon Wipha (2013) - Similar impacts and dissipation - Typhoon Lan (2017) – Another very large and powerful typhoon - Typhoon Jebi (2018) – A typhoon that took a slightly similar track path and struck Japan as a Category 2-equivalent typhoon; caused substantial damage, primarily in the Kansai region - Typhoon Trami (2018) – A Category 5-equivalent super typhoon that affected the same general area - Typhoon Hagibis (2019) – A typhoon that took almost similar track path, similar size, similar landfall date and struck Japan as a Category 2-equivalent typhoon; caused tremendous damage and marked the 40th anniversary of Tip - Hypercane

Australian contribution to the Battle of Normandy

Australians who fought in Normandy in WWII

The Australian contribution to the Battle of Normandy involved more than 3,000 military personnel serving under British command. The majority of these personnel were members of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), though smaller numbers of Australians serving with the Royal Navy and British Army also participated in the fighting prior to and after the Allied landings on 6 June 1944. While all the RAAF units based in the United Kingdom (UK) took part in the battle, Australians made up only a small portion of the Allied force. The Australians who supported the D-Day invasion included between 2,000 and 2,500 RAAF airmen in Australian squadrons and British Royal Air Force units, and approximately 500 members of the Royal Australian Navy serving on Royal Navy vessels, as well as a small number of Australian Army officers and merchant seamen. The army personnel and thousands of Australian airmen also took part in the subsequent Battle of Normandy between June and August 1944, and an RAAF fighter squadron operated from airfields in Normandy. Throughout the campaign, Australian airmen provided direct support to the Allied ground forces by attacking German military units and their supply lines, as well as forming part of the force that defended the beachhead from air attack and manning transport aircraft. Australians also indirectly supported the campaign by attacking German submarines and ships that threatened the invasion force. The 13 Australian Army officers who took part in the campaign filled a variety of roles in British units in order to gain experience that they could take back to Australia. Australian personnel also took part in the invasion of Southern France in August 1944, and RAAF airmen continued to operate against German forces until the end of the war in May 1945. However, the relatively low casualties suffered by the Allied air forces during the fighting in Normandy and subsequent campaigns resulted in an over-supply of trained Australian aircrew in the UK, hundreds of whom were never assigned to a combat role. Australia's contribution to the fighting in Normandy is commemorated in memorials and cemeteries in London and Normandy. ## Background In 1944 Australia's war effort was focused on the Pacific War, and most elements of the country's military were in Australia and the islands to its north. Nevertheless, substantial numbers of RAAF personnel, most of whom had been trained through the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS), were stationed in the United Kingdom (UK) and took part in operations against Germany. The Australian Government had very little influence over where Australian graduates of EATS were posted, and many were assigned directly to British units. As of 6 June 1944, 1,816 Australian airmen (including 584 pilots) were posted to RAF squadrons. Many of the thousands of Australian ground crew in the UK at this time were also serving with RAF units. In addition, ten RAAF flying squadrons were stationed in the UK. These included one regular RAAF unit, No. 10 Squadron, and nine temporary Article XV squadrons, which had been formed under the agreement that underpinned EATS. While the Article XV squadrons were nominally Australian, most included a substantial proportion of personnel from Britain and other Commonwealth countries; as of 1 June 1944 they were manned by 796 Australian aircrew and 572 airmen from other countries. Owing to an over-supply of aircrew trained through the Empire Air Training Scheme, there were also hundreds of RAAF airmen in the UK who were assigned to personnel depots while they waited to be posted to a combat unit; prior to the invasion these unattached airmen were considered an asset by the Allied air forces as they could rapidly replace casualties. The Australian air units were under the command of the RAF, which had 306 squadrons located in the UK at the time of the landings in Normandy. Two RAAF squadrons were assigned to the Second Tactical Air Force (2TAF), which was to provide direct support to the Allied armies during the campaign; No. 453 Squadron operated Spitfire fighters as part of No. 125 Wing and No. 464 Squadron flew Mosquito light bombers as part of No. 140 Wing. Four Australian heavy bomber squadrons formed part of RAF Bomber Command; No. 460, No. 463 and No. 467 Squadrons were equipped with Lancasters and No. 466 Squadron flew Halifaxes. No. 456 Squadron, which was a specialist night fighter unit equipped with Mosquitos, formed part of Air Defence of Great Britain and was assigned to protect the invasion force. Three other RAAF squadrons in the UK would also support operations in Normandy as part of Coastal Command; No. 10 and No. 461 Squadrons were equipped with Sunderland flying boats and flew patrols of the waters around the UK and France, while No. 455 Squadron operated against German surface shipping using Beaufighter strike aircraft. In addition to the RAAF airmen operating as part of the RAF in the UK, hundreds of Royal Australian Navy (RAN) personnel were serving with the Royal Navy (RN) at the time of the Battle of Normandy. No Australian warships took part in the operation, however. Most of the Australian officers serving with the RN were members of the Royal Australian Naval Volunteer Reserve (RANVR). Four RAN sub-lieutenants who had been sent to the UK to undergo training were also assigned to RN landing craft units to help address a shortage of officers capable of coordinating operations by these vessels. Thirteen Australian Army officers were attached to the British Army units that fought in Normandy. These officers had been posted to the UK to gain experience in planning and conducting large-scale amphibious operations, which would improve the army's procedures ahead of Australian landings in the Pacific. A single officer represented each of the Army's corps, and the personnel sent to the UK included some of the most talented and experienced members of the service. ## Pre-invasion preparations Few Australians were involved in planning the invasion. Some of those who had planning responsibilities included Lieutenant Colonel Ronald McNicoll, who served on the Operations Staff of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force; Air Commodore Frank Bladin, Senior Air Staff Officer for No. 38 Group RAF; Lieutenant Commander Victor Smith, Flag Officer for British Assault Area's air planning officer; and Major Douglas Vincent, a signals officer attached to the headquarters of the British XXX Corps. Australian-born Air Commodore Edgar McCloughry, who had served with the RAF since 1919, headed the Allied Expeditionary Air Force Bombing Committee, which prepared air plans for the invasion. During April and May the Allied air forces struck at German airfields as well as aircraft factories and repair facilities in France. No. 463 and No. 467 Squadrons participated in raids on airfields and factories near Toulouse on the nights of 5/6 April and 1/2 May, and bombed an airfield near Lanvéoc on the night of 8/9 May. The first of these raids involved 148 aircraft and was led by No. 467 Squadron's commanding officer, Wing Commander John Balmer. 2TAF also conducted 12 raids on German airfields during this period, of which eight involved individual Australians posted to RAF light bomber squadrons. Australians serving in the fighter squadrons of No. 10 Group RAF also occasionally took part in "ranger" operations over northern France in search of German aircraft. In addition, the 31 Australian pilots posted to RAF photo reconnaissance units frequently conducted sorties to monitor German dispositions along the coast of the English Channel. On 29 May Squadron Leader Douglas Sampson, who was posted to No. 16 Squadron RAF, took detailed photographs of Utah Beach which enabled the American force which was to land there to locate most of the German positions in the area. The Allies also conducted a major air offensive against the French railway network and bridges over the river Seine from April to June. Bomber Command made 53 raids against these targets, of which 25 involved the four Australian heavy bomber squadrons. A total of 17 Australian bombers were lost during these operations, including six that German fighters shot down during an attack on the marshalling yards at Lille on the night of 10/11 May. In addition, Australians took part in 29 of the 46 raids conducted by 2TAF's light bombers against French railway infrastructure. Australian fighter pilots, including all of No. 453 Squadron on occasion, escorted some of these raids and conducted ground attack sorties targeting railway rolling stock. 2TAF's fighter-bombers also attacked bridges over the river Seine from April as part of an effort to seal off the Normandy region, and Australian pilots posted to British squadrons were involved in a small number of these operations. No. 453 Squadron attacked bridges and viaducts near Normandy on 27 April and 2 May. Australians participated in attacks on German defences in France in the weeks before D-Day. No. 453 Squadron made four raids on radar stations in late May and early June, and RAAF pilots serving with British fighter and fighter-bomber squadrons took part in other such attacks. The four Australian heavy bomber squadrons contributed aircraft to raids on radar stations and communications facilities in the week before the landing. These units also struck German coastal batteries along the channel coast on nine occasions between 8 and 29 May; Australians serving with British light bomber units took part in a further 14 raids on German batteries. The RAAF heavy bomber squadrons and Australians in RAF light and heavy bomber units also participated in raids against German Army camps in France and Belgium during May. The Australian squadrons suffered heavy losses in several of these attacks, including seven aircraft lost during a raid on the 21st Panzer Division's facilities at Mailly-le-Camp on the night of 3/4 May. In addition to these attacks on German positions, Bomber Command struck the seven largest German munitions factories and ammunition dumps in France during late April and early May; the four Australian squadrons participated in five of these operations, and no Australian aircraft were lost. Leading up to the invasion, the RAF intensified its operations against German submarines and ships operating near France. Coastal Command aircraft destroyed six submarines within eleven days during May; Australian aircrew contributed to three of these sinkings. Bomber Command also expanded its program of laying naval mines from April, and No. 460 Squadron as well as Australians posted to RAF light and heavy bomber units took part in several minelaying operations in the Baltic Sea and Heligoland Bight. Coastal Command's anti-shipping force, which included the RAAF's No. 455 Squadron, mainly undertook training exercises from April, but occasionally attacked German convoys in the English Channel. Australian airmen were also involved in protecting southern England from German air attack in the lead-up to the invasion. From late April to early June No. 456 Squadron was part of a force that defended port cities in southern England from a series of air raids. The Australian squadron accounted for eight of the 22 bombers shot down by Air Defence of Great Britain night fighters during this period. No. 464 Squadron also conducted "intruder" raids that tried to destroy German bombers as they returned to their bases in France. During this period, No. 453 Squadron and 36 Australians posted to eight RAF units took part in defensive patrols which sought to prevent German reconnaissance aircraft flying over southern England during daylight hours, but no German aircraft attempted this. In addition to the air campaign, a small number of Australians took part in special operations ahead of the invasion. In January 1944, RANVR officer Lieutenant Ken Hudspeth, who commanded the midget submarine HMS X20, transported a party of specialist personnel to inspect and collect soil samples from French beaches being considered for the invasion. This operation was successful, and earned Hudspeth his second Distinguished Service Cross (DSC). Nancy Wake, an Australian serving with the British Special Operations Executive, was parachuted into France in April 1944 and subsequently helped to organise the French Resistance in the Auvergne region. ## Australians at D-Day On the night of 5/6 June Bomber Command conducted precision attacks on ten German coastal artillery batteries near the beaches where Allied troops were to land. Each battery was targeted by approximately 100 heavy bombers, and all four Australian heavy bomber squadrons took part in the operation. No. 460 Squadron dispatched 26 aircraft, which were evenly split between attacking the batteries at Fontenay-Crisbecq and St Martin de Varreville. No. 466 Squadron provided 13 aircraft to the raid on batteries at Merville-Franceville Maisy, 14 aircraft from No. 463 Squadron struck Pointe du Hoe and No. 467 Squadron dispatched 14 against batteries at Ouistreham. The RAAF squadrons did not suffer any losses. Many Australian aircrew posted to British units also participated in this attack, and 14.8 per cent of the 1,136 Bomber Command aircraft despatched were either part of RAAF squadrons or were flown by Australians. Australians posted to RAF units also landed paratroopers in Normandy and took part in diversionary operations. On the night of 5/6 June several Australian airmen served in heavy bombers that dropped "window" chaff in patterns that, on German radar, simulated the appearance of convoys headed for the Pas de Calais region of France. Other Australians served in aircraft that dropped dummy paratroopers and jammed German radar. One Australian pilot posted to No. 139 Squadron RAF took part in "intruder" bombing raids against targets in western Germany and the Low Countries that sought to divert German aircraft away from Normandy. Australian aircrew also served aboard the transport aircraft of No. 38 Group RAF and No. 46 Group RAF, which flew the British 6th Airborne Division from the UK to Normandy on the night of 5/6 June. About 14 per cent of the transport aircraft in No. 38 Group were piloted by Australians, though the proportion of Australians in No. 46 Group was much lower. There were no completely Australian aircrews in either group. Australian aircrew supported the fighting on 6 June. No. 453 Squadron was one of 36 Allied squadrons that provided low-altitude air defence for the invasion fleet and landing force. Many of the squadron's pilots flew several sorties during the day, though they did not encounter any German aircraft. No. 456 Squadron also formed part of the force that provided air defence for the invasion area at night. In addition, about 200 Australian pilots were spread across the dozens of RAF fighter and fighter-bomber units that supported the landings. A small number of Australian aircrew also served in RAF reconnaissance units and 2TAF's light bomber squadrons, which also saw combat over France on D-Day. The three Australian squadrons assigned to Coastal Command flew only a small number of sorties on 6 June as few German submarines or E-boats put to sea. About 500 RAN personnel served on board RN ships involved in the operation. While most formed part of the crew of RN warships, several Australian officers led flotillas of landing craft and others commanded individual craft. For instance, Sub-Lieutenant Dean Murray commanded a force of six RN Landing Craft Assault that landed soldiers of the British 3rd Infantry Division at Sword Beach. Hudspeth also took X20 across the channel to mark the edge of Juno Beach during the landings there; he received his third DSC for completing this mission. Some of the warships with Australian crew members that supported the landings were HMS Ajax (which had three RANVR officers on board), Ashanti, Enterprise, Eskimo, Glasgow, Mackay and Scylla. Australian members of the Merchant Navy also participated in the D-Day landings, though the number of sailors involved is not known. Few of the Australian Army officers attached to British units landed on D-Day. Major Jo Gullett, who was the second in command of an infantry company in the 7th Battalion, Green Howards, came ashore on Gold Beach as part of the invasion force. In his memoirs, Gullett described the landing as "easily the most impressive occasion of my life". He subsequently led a company of the Royal Scots until he was wounded by German machine gun fire on 17 July. Most of the other Australian officers served in staff positions; for instance Lieutenant Colonel Bill Robertson was the chief of staff of the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division when that unit arrived in Normandy and was later posted to the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division where he served in the same role. Vincent came ashore on 7 June and served with XXX Corps, 7th Armoured and 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Divisions during the campaign. Due to the lack of a nominal roll or other records listing the Australians who took part in the D-Day landings, it is not possible to determine the exact number involved. However, it has been estimated that about 3,000 Australian military personnel and merchant seamen participated in the operation. Historians also give slightly different figures for the number of Australians killed on 6 June. Peter Stanley wrote in 2004 that there were 14 Australian fatalities, of whom 12 were RAAF airmen and two members of the RAN, and in 2019 Lachlan Grant put the number killed at 13. ## Subsequent fighting The fighting in Normandy continued until August 1944, when the Allies broke out of the region and rapidly advanced to the German border. This campaign dominated the activities of eight of the ten Australian squadrons in the UK, as well as most of the airmen posted to RAF units. During July and August the RAAF units operated at or near their highest level of activity in the war to that point, but morale remained high as the airmen perceived that the contribution of air power to the campaign would be decisive. Large numbers of Australian airmen who were undergoing training or awaiting a posting on D-Day were assigned to combat units during the fighting to replace casualties of the Normandy campaign. A small number of Australian served in Normandy with the British Army. These included a truck driver who served with the Mechanised Transport Corps, two Australians in Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service and a member of the Territorial Army Nursing Service. In addition to the military personnel involved in the fighting, several Australian war correspondents reported on the Battle of Normandy. Chester Wilmot landed with the 6th Airborne Division on D-Day, and his coverage of the fighting for the BBC soon made him one of the best-known Allied war correspondents. Other Australian journalists in Normandy included John Hetherington, Geoff Hutton, Anne Matheson and Ronald Monson. ### June Australian airmen were involved in Allied efforts to delay German reinforcements from reaching Normandy throughout June. On the night of 6/7 June, 20 Mosquitos from No. 464 Squadron were dispatched to attack German road convoys and trains in northern France. The four Australian heavy bomber squadrons also participated in raids on French towns on this night. While No. 463, No. 466 and No. 467 Squadrons mainly targeted railway facilities, No. 460 Squadron formed part of an attack on Vire, which sought to destroy the town to prevent the Germans from using the roads through it. Following these initial raids, Bomber Command continued to target railway infrastructure in France in an attempt to disrupt the movement of German reinforcements to Normandy. The command operated intensively during the week after the invasion, and some Australian aircrew flew raids on consecutive nights during this period. Overall, Bomber Command made 16 raids against railway facilities in France between 13 and 30 June, of which six included at least one of the RAAF squadrons. The RAAF heavy bomber squadrons and Australians in RAF units also took part in several attacks on German supply dumps and airfields during this period. Bomber Command made fewer raids on these targets than had been planned prior to the invasion, however, as its units were frequently assigned to strike facilities associated with the V-1 flying bombs the Germans were launching against the UK. No. 464 Squadron also operated against German vehicles travelling at night and bombed railway yards, and flew 75 sorties between the nights of 7/8 and 12/13 June. Overall, the squadron conducted attacks on 19 nights during June, during which five of its aircraft were destroyed. The Australians in 2TAF's other light and medium bomber units also attacked the German lines of communication in France and occasionally provided direct support for the Allied ground forces throughout this period. During June, Australians also contributed to the defence of the Allied beachhead against German air and naval attacks. No. 453 Squadron and the RAAF fighter pilots in RAF units continued to fly patrols over the beachhead in the week after D-Day, but only rarely encountered German aircraft. From 11 June the Australian squadron's aircraft frequently operated from airfields built at Normandy, and on the 25th of the month it and the other units of No. 125 Wing moved from the UK to Advanced Landing Ground B11 within the beachhead near Longues-sur-Mer. By late June, No. 453 Squadron and the other RAF Spitfire units were regularly attacking German positions in Normandy as well as providing air defence for the Allied forces in the area; during the month the squadron flew more than 700 sorties. A small number of Australians posted to RAF squadrons equipped with Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers also attacked German vehicles and positions in direct support of the Allied ground troops throughout the month. No. 456 Squadron, which was one of four night fighter squadrons assigned to protect the beachhead, frequently met German aircraft and shot down twelve of them in the week after the landing. Australian fighter ace Flight Lieutenant Nicky Barr, who had escaped from German custody in Italy during 1943, also briefly served in an air support control unit in Normandy. Barr landed at Omaha Beach on 9 June, but returned to the UK three days later as his commanding officer believed that German forces would execute Barr if they recaptured him. German submarines and surface warships sortied to attack the Allied invasion fleet, and the Australian members of Coastal Command participated in attacks on these vessels. The two RAAF flying boat squadrons operated intensively throughout June, but did not sink any German ships or submarines. The aircrew of two of the British B-24 Liberators that sank German submarines during this period included Australian personnel, however, and Australians were on board several of the other RAF aircraft flying anti-submarine and anti-shipping patrols. In addition, No. 455 Squadron took part in several attacks on E-boats operating near Normandy as well as German shipping travelling through the English Channel. No. 460 Squadron and Australians in other Bomber Command units also participated in raids on E-Boat bases at Le Havre and Boulogne on the nights of 14/15 June and 15/16 June respectively. ### July and August By July the Allied armies were having difficulty advancing against the German forces in Normandy. In an attempt to create a breakthrough, the Allied air commanders decided to use heavy bombers to attack German positions. The first of these attacks was made on 7 July by 467 Bomber Command aircraft and targeted German forces near Caen, as well as the city itself. The Australian contribution to this raid included 20 Lancasters from No. 460 Squadron and 14 Halifaxes from No. 466 Squadron as well as aircrew in RAF units. One of No. 460 Squadron's aircraft made a crash landing within the Allied beachhead after being damaged by German anti-aircraft guns, but its crew survived and were evacuated to the UK. While the attack devastated Caen, the ground troops were only able to capture the northern half of the city when they advanced on 8 July. All four Australian heavy bomber squadrons participated in a series of attacks on German positions on 18 July as part of Operation Goodwood, but this offensive also failed to result in a breakthrough. On 30 July, No. 463, No. 466 and No. 467 Squadrons contributed aircraft to another major bombardment of German positions near Caumont ahead of Operation Bluecoat; 693 heavy bombers took part in this attack, of which 39 were from the Australian squadrons, but many did not drop their bombs as cloud obscured the aiming markers in the target area. All four Australian heavy bomber squadrons participated in the next major attack, which took place on the night of 7/8 August to support Operation Totalize, but cloud and smoke again prevented many of the bombers from attacking the target area. The four squadrons also attacked German Army positions on 14 August in support of Operation Tractable; visibility was clear over most of the target area, and the raids were considered successful. By this time the Allied armies had successfully broken out of Normandy, and no further heavy bomber attacks were required. Australians also continued to be involved in Allied air attacks aimed at disrupting movement of German troops and supplies to Normandy during July and August. As well as supporting the ground forces in Normandy and continuing to bomb V-1 flying bomb launch facilities in northern France, Bomber Command attacked railway facilities in France during July and August, and at least one of the Australian heavy bomber squadrons participated in 15 of the 25 raids conducted against these targets. No. 464 Squadron also flew more than 350 sorties during July and 400 in August against transport infrastructure in France and convoys of German vehicles. These operations, which were generally conducted at night, cost the unit three aircraft. The only interruption to No. 464 Squadron's attacks on transportation came on the night of 14/15 July, when four aircraft piloted by highly experienced airmen conducted a successful precision strike on the Gestapo barracks at Bonneuil-Matours. Australian aircrew assigned to other 2TAF medium bomber and fighter-bomber units also participated in attacks on bridges and railways throughout July. No. 453 Squadron operated from Normandy during July and August, and mainly patrolled behind the German front line in search of motor transport to attack. It occasionally encountered German aircraft during this period and shot down several Me 109 and Fw 190 fighters. The squadron flew 727 sorties during July, but lost several of its Spitfires to German anti-aircraft guns. No. 453 Squadron continued to operate against German transport during August, and moved to an airfield near Lingèvres on the 13th of the month. This airfield was attacked by a German aircraft the next day, resulting in the death of one Australian pilot and another three wounded. The squadron experienced considerable success during the Allied break-out, and claimed to have destroyed a large number of German vehicles during August. Overall, No. 453 Squadron flew more than 1,300 combat sorties during July and August. While No. 456 Squadron's night fighters conducted patrols over Normandy in early July and shot down four German bombers on the 5th of the month, the unit—in common with almost all the Mosquito-equipped night fighter squadrons stationed in the UK—was tasked with intercepting V-1 flying bombs from 6 July onwards. The Australian flying boat squadrons assigned to Coastal Command also continued to support the invasion during July and August. On 8 July a No. 10 Squadron Sunderland sank the German submarine U-243 130 miles (210 km) south-west of Brest. Overall, No. 10 Squadron flew 56 patrols during July and No. 461 Squadron conducted 67, most of which were made at night. One of No. 461 Squadron's Sunderlands damaged the submarine U-385 150 miles (240 km) south of Brest on 10 August, and it was sunk the next day by HMS Starling. On 13 August another No. 461 Squadron Sunderland attacked and sank U-270. No. 10 Squadron flew almost as many patrols throughout August as it had during July, but did not encounter any submarines. No. 455 Squadron took part in attacks on German shipping travelling off the Netherlands and in the North Sea during July and August, but these operations were not directly related to supporting the invasion. ## Aftermath RAAF personnel also participated in the Allied invasion of southern France (Operation Dragoon) during August 1944. No. 458 Squadron, which was equipped with Wellington bombers, flew anti-submarine patrols and attacked targets in northern Italy and southern France ahead of the landings, which took place on the 15th of the month. The squadron continued these duties until the end of August. The Spitfire-equipped No. 451 Squadron escorted Allied invasion convoys on 14 August and patrolled over the Allied beachhead as troops came ashore the next day. From 25 August the squadron was based at an airfield near Cuers in France and provided air defence for the region until October. Few German aircraft were encountered throughout this period, however. The low casualties the Commonwealth air forces incurred during the Battle of Normandy led to an over-supply of trained aircrew. While the number of pilots and other airmen undergoing training through the EATS had begun to be reduced in early 1944, by 30 June there were thousands of qualified airmen—including 3,000 Australians—in the UK waiting for posts in operational units. This number greatly exceeded the requirements of the Allied air forces. Accordingly, the flow of airmen from EATS training facilities in Canada to the UK was greatly cut back, and Australia ceased sending airmen overseas for training under the scheme in August. While 1,245 Australian airmen arrived in the UK during the last six months of 1944 (a reduction from the 5,181 who had arrived in the first six months of the year), only those who were qualified as air gunners were typically ever assigned to combat units. It was not possible to find flying positions for most of the remaining unattached airmen who arrived after June 1944, and some were posted back to Australia; the remainder spent the rest of the war in training courses and various non-flying roles. Australian military personnel in Europe remained in action until the end of the war. At the time of the German surrender in May 1945, there were 15,500 members of the RAAF in the UK and western Europe, of whom 12,300 were qualified aircrew. Most members of the small party of Australian Army officers who had been posted to the UK ahead of D-Day also remained in Europe until the end of the war. ## Commemoration Overall, 1,177 Australian military personnel were killed in western Europe and Britain during the lead-up to the invasion of France and the subsequent Normandy Campaign. These losses were higher than those suffered by Australian forces in the Pacific during this period. The Australian War Memorial has stated that hundreds of Australian airmen were killed while supporting the Allied troops in Normandy, and that "in terms of total casualties June 1944 was the worst month in the history of the Royal Australian Air Force". A total of 44 Australians are buried in Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries in the Normandy region. These include men killed in the region prior to the invasion and those who died during the fighting in 1944. Of the Australian graves, 17 are located at the Bayeux War Cemetery, six at Saint-Désir de Lisieux, five at Banneville-la-Campagne, four at the Bretteville-sur-Laize Canadian War Cemetery, three at both Douvres la Délivrande and Hermanville-sur-Mer, two in Ranville and one each at Ryes-Nazenville, Saint-Manvieu-Norrey, Bolbec and Tilly-sur-Seulles. The Bayeux Memorial, which lists the names of Commonwealth personnel killed in Normandy with no known grave, does not include any Australians. The most recent burial of an Australian serviceman in Normandy took place in April 2011 when No. 453 Squadron pilot Flight Lieutenant Henry Lacy Smith was interred at Ranville War Cemetery. Smith drowned when his Spitfire crash-landed in the River Orne on 11 June 1944, but his body was not recovered until November 2010. Australia's involvement in the Battle of Normandy has also been commemorated through memorials and official state visits. Many of the RAAF squadrons that fought in the campaign were awarded battle honours after the war in recognition of their contribution. "Normandy" is also one of the 47 battle sites recorded on the Australian War Memorial, London, which was dedicated in 2003. In 2004, Australian Prime Minister John Howard attended the ceremonies in France that marked the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. The French Government also awarded the Legion of Honour to ten of the surviving Australian veterans of the landings to commemorate this anniversary. In 2014, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and a party of seven Australian veterans of the campaign attended ceremonies held to commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Prime Minister Scott Morrison attended the commemorations of the 75th anniversary of D-Day in 2019. Governor-General David Hurley represented Australia at the 80th anniversary commemorations in 2024. When the Mémorial de Caen opened in 1988, the flagpoles outside the museum commemorating the countries that participated in the battle did not include an Australian flag. Former No. 453 Squadron fighter pilot Colin Leith campaigned to have an Australian flag added, and this was achieved on 1 May 1998. Despite these commemorations, there is little awareness among modern Australians of their country's role in the fighting in Normandy. The campaigns fought in the Pacific have a much more prominent place in the public memory of World War II. Lachlan Grant, a historian at the Australian War Memorial, noted in 2024 that "traditionally there has been a sense that it [the Normandy landings] wasn’t much of an Australian story ... but there is a large Australian story there – we just needed to find out who the people were". ## See also - Second Australian Imperial Force in the United Kingdom

Kareena Kapoor Khan

Indian actress (born 1980)

Kareena Kapoor Khan (; née Kapoor; born 21 September 1980) is an Indian actress. A prolific leading lady of Hindi cinema since 2000, she is noted for her roles in a range of film genres—from romantic comedies to crime dramas. Kapoor is the recipient of several awards, including six Filmfare Awards, and as of 2024, is one of Hindi cinema's highest-paid actresses. Born into the Kapoor family, she is the daughter of actors Babita and Randhir Kapoor, and the younger sister of actress Karisma Kapoor. After making her acting debut in 2000 in Refugee, Kapoor established herself the following year with several roles, including in the top-grossing drama Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.... This was followed by a series of commercial failures and negative reviews for her repetitive roles. An against-type performance as a sex worker in the 2004 drama Chameli marked a turning point in her career. She earned critical recognition for her portrayal of a riot victim in the 2004 drama Dev and a character based on Desdemona in the 2006 crime film Omkara. Her performance as a loquacious woman in the romantic comedy Jab We Met (2007) earned her the Filmfare Award for Best Actress. Further praise came for her dramatic performances in Kurbaan (2009), Talaash: The Answer Lies Within, Heroine (both 2012), Udta Punjab (2016) and Laal Singh Chaddha (2022). Her highest-grossing releases include the comedy-dramas 3 Idiots (2009) and Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015), the action films Bodyguard (2011) and Singham Returns (2014), and the comedies Golmaal 3 (2010) and Good Newwz (2019). She has also starred in the female-led comedies Veere Di Wedding (2018) and Crew (2024). Kapoor Khan is married to actor Saif Ali Khan, with whom she has two sons. Her off-screen life is the subject of widespread coverage in India. She is known for being outspoken and assertive and is recognised for her fashion style. Beside film acting, Kapoor participates in stage shows, hosts a radio show and has contributed as a co-writer to two autobiographical memoirs and two books of nutrition guides. She has started her own line of clothing and cosmetics for women, and has worked with UNICEF since 2014 to advocate for the education of girls and an increase in quality based education in India. ## Early life Born on 21 September 1980 in Bombay (now Mumbai), Kapoor (often informally referred to as 'Bebo') is the younger daughter of Randhir Kapoor and Babita (née Shivdasani); her elder sister Karisma is also an actress. Kapoor is the paternal granddaughter of actor and filmmaker Raj Kapoor, maternal granddaughter of actor Hari Shivdasani, and great-granddaughter of filmmaker Prithviraj Kapoor. The actors Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Kapoor are Kapoor's uncle and aunt respectively, and their son, Ranbir Kapoor, is also an actor. According to Kapoor, her name "Kareena" was derived from the book Anna Karenina, which her mother read while she was pregnant with her. Kapoor is of Punjabi descent on her father's side, and on her mother's side she is of Sindhi and British descent. Describing herself as a naughty, spoilt child, Kapoor's exposure to films from a young age kindled her interest in acting; she was particularly inspired by the work of actresses Nargis and Meena Kumari. Despite her family background, her father disapproved of women entering films because he believed it conflicted with the traditional maternal duties and responsibility of women in the family. This led to a conflict between her parents and they lived separately before reconciling in October 2007. She was raised by her mother, who worked several jobs to support her daughters until Karisma debuted as an actress in 1991. Although her father was not present for most her childhood, Kapoor remarked that he played an important role in her life. Kapoor attended Jamnabai Narsee School in Mumbai, followed by Welham Girls' School in Dehradun. She attended the institution primarily to satisfy her mother, though later admitted to liking the experience. According to Kapoor, she was not inclined towards academics though received good grades in all her classes except mathematics. Upon graduating from Welham, she returned to Mumbai and studied commerce for two years at Mithibai College. Kapoor then registered for a three-month summer course in microcomputers at Harvard Summer School in the United States. She later developed an interest in law, and enrolled at the Government Law College, Mumbai; during this period, she developed a long-lasting passion for reading. However, after completing her first year, she decided to pursue her interest in acting, though she later regretted not having completed her education. She began training at an acting institute in Mumbai mentored by Kishore Namit Kapoor, a member of the Film and Television Institute of India. ## Life and career ### Career beginnings, breakthrough and setback (2000–2003) While training at the institute, Kapoor was cast as the lead in Rakesh Roshan's Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai (2000), opposite Hrithik Roshan. Several days into the filming, however, she abandoned the production since more prominence was given to the director's son than her. She debuted later that year alongside Abhishek Bachchan in J. P. Dutta's Refugee. Set during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, Kapoor was introduced as Naaz, a Bangladeshi girl with whom Bachchan's character falls in love. Dutta cast her for the combination of youthfulness and innocence he found in her, and Kapoor considered their collaboration to be a learning experience that helped her personally and professionally. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama noted "the ease with which she emotes the most difficult of scenes", and India Today reported that she belonged to a new breed of Hindi film actors that breaks away from character stereotypes. Refugee was a moderate box-office success in India and Kapoor's performance earned her the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut. Kapoor was paired opposite Tusshar Kapoor in Satish Kaushik's box-office hit Mujhe Kucch Kehna Hai (2001). A review in The Hindu noted that based on her first two films, she was "definitely the actress to watch out for". She next starred in Subhash Ghai's flop Yaadein, followed by Abbas–Mustan's moderately successful thriller Ajnabee. Later that year, she appeared in Santosh Sivan's period epic Aśoka, a partly fictionalised account of the life of the Indian emperor Ashoka. Featured opposite Shah Rukh Khan, Kapoor found herself challenged playing the complex personality of her character Kaurwaki with whom Ashoka falls in love. Aśoka was screened at the Venice and 2001 Toronto International Film Festivals, and received generally positive reviews internationally but failed to do well in India, which was attributed by critics to the way Ashoka was portrayed. Jeff Vice of The Deseret News commended her compelling screen presence. At the 47th Filmfare Awards, Aśoka was nominated for five awards including a Best Actress nomination for Kapoor. A breakthrough in Kapoor's career came when she was cast by Karan Johar as Pooja ("Poo", a good-natured, superficial girl) in the 2001 melodrama Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.... She found little resemblance between herself and her "over-the-top" character, and modeled Poo's personality on that of Johar. Filming the big-budget production, alongside an ensemble cast was a new experience for Kapoor, and she recalls it fondly as a dream come true. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... was an immensely popular release, finishing as India's second highest-grossing film of the year and Kapoor's highest-grossing film to that point. It became one of the biggest Bollywood success of all time in the overseas market, earning over ₹1 billion (US$12 million) worldwide. Taran Adarsh described Kapoor as "one of the main highlights of the film", and she received her second Filmfare nomination for the role—her first for Best Supporting Actress—as well as nominations at the International Indian Academy (IIFA) and Screen Awards. Box Office India reported that the success of Mujhe Kucch Kehna Hai and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... established Kapoor as a leading actress of Hindi cinema, and Rediff.com published that with Aśoka she had become the highest-paid Indian actress to that point earning ₹15 million (US$180,000) per film. During 2002 and 2003, Kapoor continued to work in a number of projects but experienced a setback. All six films in which she starred—Mujhse Dosti Karoge\!, Jeena Sirf Merre Liye, Talaash: The Hunt Begins..., Khushi, Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon, and the four-hour war epic LOC Kargil—were critically and commercially unsuccessful. Critics described her performances in these films as variations of the character she played in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham..., and expressed concern that she was becoming typecast. She later spoke positively of this period, recalling it as a beneficial lesson which taught her to work harder. ### Professional expansion (2004–2006) By 2004, Kapoor, who had confessed to having entered the film industry strictly for financial reasons, was eager on broadening her range as an actor and thus decided to accept more challenging roles in addition to the archetypical glamorous lead. Under the direction of Sudhir Mishra, Kapoor starred in Chameli as a golden-hearted prostitute who meets with a widowed investment banker (Rahul Bose). When Kapoor was first offered the part, she passed on it, explaining that she would be uncomfortable in the role. She relented when Mishra approached her for the second time, and in preparation for the role, visited several of Mumbai's red-light districts at night to study the mannerisms of sex workers and the way they dressed. With a production budget of ₹20 million (US$240,000), the independent film marked a departure from the high-profile productions Kapoor previously starred in. The Times of India praised her for having exceeded all expectations; Rediff.com, however, found her portrayal unconvincing and excessively stereotypical, comparing her mannerisms to a caricature. Chameli marked a significant turning point in Kapoor's career and she received a special jury recognition at the 49th Filmfare Awards. Kapoor next co-starred in Mani Ratnam's Yuva, a composite film about three youngsters from different strata of society whose lives intersect by a car accident; she featured as Vivek Oberoi's romantic interest. Despite not having "much of a role", she agreed to the project due to her desire to work with Ratnam. Film critic Subhash K. Jha concurred that her role was insubstantial, but further stated that Kapoor uses her "character traits to her ... advantage to create a girl who is at once enigmatic and all-there". She then appeared alongside Amitabh Bachchan and Fardeen Khan in Govind Nihalani's critically acclaimed film Dev, which revolved around the 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat. Kapoor starred as a Muslim victim and contributed in the soundtrack by providing the vocals. Nihalani was initially hesitant to cast a mainstream commercial actress but found that Kapoor displayed a level of intelligence and sensitivity beyond her years. She was eager to work with him, as his films Ardh Satya (1983) and Tamas (1988) gave her a deeper appreciation for cinema, and identified with her character's ability to be strong yet simple. It earned her critical acclaim and a Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actress. Kapoor was cast for the first time as a villain in Fida (2004), a thriller about an online heist. Critics noted a distinct progression from her earlier roles. That same year, she starred in Abbas–Mustan's thriller Aitraaz and Priyadarshan's comedy Hulchul. Aitraaz follows the story of a man (Akshay Kumar) accused of sexual harassment by his female superior (Priyanka Chopra). Kapoor was offered Chopra's part, but decided to play Kumar's wife, knowing that Indian women would better identify with her character. Jitesh Pillai of The Times of India found Kapoor to have a small role, but noted that she "shines through brightly earning her big moment in the courtroom sequence". Meanwhile, Hulchul became Kapoor's first commercial success in three years. Her next film, Bewafaa, in 2005, was panned by critics. Nikhat Kazmi believed that to become a serious actress Kapoor was embodying a maturer, more-jaded character beyond her years in Bewafaa. Her final two releases of the year included the romantic dramas Kyon Ki and Dosti: Friends Forever, both of which underperformed at the box office. In her next two releases—the thriller 36 China Town and the comedy Chup Chup Ke (both 2006)—she starred opposite Shahid Kapoor. 36 China Town was a commercial success and Chup Chup Ke performed moderately well. The filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj saw Kapoor in Yuva, and was sufficiently impressed to cast her in his next project, Omkara, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello set against the backdrop of the political system in Uttar Pradesh. Kapoor featured as Desdemona and was challenged on portraying the character's inner turmoil, which she believed was much more subtle and subdued. She subsequently attended several script-reading sessions with the entire cast, and described the project as a special one for her. Omkara premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and was screened at the Cairo International Film Festival. Filmfare praised her ability to convey the various emotions her character went through, and her portrayal earned her a fourth Filmfare and first Screen Award. Kapoor considers it to be a favourite among her roles and compared her portrayal of Dolly with her own evolving maturity as a woman. ### Established actress (2007–2011) Kapoor next teamed with Shahid Kapoor for a fourth time in the romantic comedy Jab We Met (2007), in which she portrayed Geet Dhillon, a vivacious Sikh girl with a zest for life. Director Imtiaz Ali was not a well-known figure before its production, but Kapoor agreed to the film after being fascinated with his script. She collaborated closely with Ali to build her character and was challenged on effectively portraying Dhillon's exuberant personality without making it caricaturish. Jab We Met was received favourably by critics and became successful at the box office. The BBC commented that the role required a mixture of naivety and spontaneity, and was impressed with Kapoor's effort; Rajeev Masand labelled her the film's "biggest strength". Kapoor was awarded the Filmfare Award for Best Actress and her second Screen Award. While shooting for Jab We Met, Kapoor and Shahid ended their four-year relationship. She admitted to being heartbroken by the split and hoped that they would reconcile their friendship in the future. The following year, Kapoor co-starred in Vijay Krishna Acharya's Tashan, where she met her future husband in actor Saif Ali Khan. Although highly anticipated by the audience before release, the film underperformed at the box office. After providing her voice for the character of the love interest of a street dog in the Yash Raj Films and Walt Disney Pictures animated film Roadside Romeo, Kapoor played a mistrustful wife who believed her husband was unfaithful in Rohit Shetty's comedy Golmaal Returns. A sequel to the 2006 film Golmaal: Fun Unlimited, the film had an ambivalent reception from critics. The Indian Express believed the screenplay was derivative, concluding that her character and performance lacked originality. Golmaal Returns was a financial success with global revenues of ₹793 million (US$9.5 million). In 2009, Kapoor was cast as Simrita Rai, a surgeon who moonlights as a model, in Sabbir Khan's battle-of-the-sexes comedy Kambakkht Ishq. Set in Los Angeles, it was the first Indian film shot at Universal Studios. The film was poorly received by critics but became an economic success. The box-office flop Main Aurr Mrs Khanna came next, following which she played the leading lady in the dramatic thriller Kurbaan. Starring Kapoor as a woman confined to house arrest after discovering that her husband is a terrorist, she found the film to be an emotionally draining experience due to how difficult it was to disconnect from her character. Kapoor received her fourth Filmfare Best Actress nomination. Gaurav Malani of The Economic Times commented that after a long time the actress was given a substantial role with a potential to boost her career, while Subhash K. Jha described it as her "most consistently pitched performance to date" played with sensitivity. Kapoor's second Filmfare nomination that year came for Rajkumar Hirani's 3 Idiots, based on the novel Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat, co-starring Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan and Sharman Joshi. Her role is that of Pia, a medical student and Khan's love interest. The film emerged as the highest-grossing Bollywood film of all time up until then, grossing ₹2.03 billion (US$24 million) in India. It also did well internationally, earning over ₹1.08 billion (US$13 million), the second biggest Bollywood success ever in the overseas market. Deccan Herald opined that Kapoor "brings a dollop of sunshine and feminine grace to an otherwise masculine tale", taking note of her spontaneity while playing her character. 3 Idiots received several Best Film recognitions at major Indian award functions, and Kapoor was awarded the IIFA Award for Best Actress, among others. Kapoor began the new decade with a leading role in the poorly received romantic comedy Milenge Milenge (2010). Critics found the film to be outdated with stereotypical characters. A supporting role in We Are Family, an official adaptation of the Hollywood tearjerker Stepmom (1998), proved more rewarding. In an attempt to bring her interpretation to the part originally played by Julia Roberts, Kapoor refrained from watching Stepmom again and was drawn to the complexity of her character. Priyanka Roy of The Telegraph criticised it for being melodramatic, but praised Kapoor for enhancing the whole film. Kapoor was awarded the Best Supporting Actress at the 56th Filmfare Awards. She reunited with director Rohit Shetty for Golmaal 3, which received mixed reviews but earned more than ₹1 billion (US$12 million) domestically. For her performance, Kapoor received Best Actress nominations at various award ceremonies including Filmfare. Further success came to Kapoor in 2011 when she starred as the love interest of Salman Khan's character in Bodyguard, a remake of the 2010 Malayalam film of the same name. The film was not well received by critics, though became a financial success, with a domestic total of ₹1.4 billion (US$17 million)—India's highest-earning film of the year. A review in Mint dismissed Kapoor's role as ornamental; Mid-Day argued she "actually manages to bring her caricature of a role alive". She next appeared in the Anubhav Sinha-directed sci-fi film Ra.One, revolving on a villainous videogame character (Shah Rukh Khan) who escapes into the real world. Made on a budget of ₹1.5 billion (US$18 million), the film became one of the biggest earners of the year with a worldwide total of over ₹2.4 billion (US$29 million)—despite negative media coverage of its box-office performance—and Kapoor's fourth major commercial success in three consecutive years. ### Marriage, continued success and motherhood (2012–2017) Kapoor followed her success in Bodyguard and Ra.One with a role in Shakun Batra's Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (2012) opposite Imran Khan. Set in Las Vegas, the romantic comedy follows the story of two strangers who get married one night after getting drunk. She played Riana Braganza, a carefree young woman, and was particularly drawn to the qualities of her character. The film received positive reviews and was an economic success, grossing a total of ₹530 million (US$6.4 million) in India and abroad. The Hollywood Reporter found her "endearingly natural"; Sukanya Verma of Rediff.com complimented her for playing a non-ornamental role since that in Jab We Met. She next appeared in Agent Vinod, an espionage thriller directed by Sriram Raghavan. Kapoor was enthusiastic about the project, but it met with a tepid response and she was described as miscast. Asked why she took the role, Kapoor described it as an opportunity to attempt something she had never done before. For her next feature, Kapoor was cast as a fading movie star in Madhur Bhandarkar's Heroine. Initially skeptical about taking on the part whose personality she felt to be far removed from her own, she agreed after Bhandarkar enforced his faith in her. Although not a method actor, Kapoor believed that the intense role had left her on edge in her personal life and refrained from taking on any other projects. Reviewers found the film monotonous, but noted that it was watchable primarily due to Kapoor's performance. Rajeev Masand described it as "a deliciously camp performance" that was played "with utmost sincerity". Bollywood Hungama opined that it was her best work to date and concluded that despite an inconsistent character, Kapoor embellished it "with a rare vulnerability and an exceptional inner life". At the annual Stardust Awards, Kapoor garnered the Editor's Choice for Best Actress, and received additional nominations at Filmfare, IIFA, Producers Guild, Screen and Stardust. On 16 October 2012, Kapoor married actor Saif Ali Khan in a private ceremony in Bandra, Mumbai, and she gave birth to their sons in 2016 and 2021 respectively. Kapoor stated that despite adding Khan to her name she would continue practising Hinduism after marriage. Talaash: The Answer Lies Within, in which she played the prostitute Rosie (as Kareena Kapoor Khan), was her final release of 2012. The film is set against the backdrop of Mumbai's red-light districts and follows the travails of a police officer (Aamir Khan) who is assigned the duty of solving a mysterious car accident. The Telegraph found Kapoor Khan a standout among the other performers, adding that "she brings an unseen mix of oomph and emotion". With global revenues of ₹1.74 billion (US$21 million), the film emerged as a box office hit, and earned Kapoor Khan Best Actress nominations at the Screen, Stardust and Zee Cine award ceremonies. In 2013, Kapoor Khan collaborated with Ajay Devgn for the fourth time in Prakash Jha's Satyagraha, a socio-political drama loosely inspired by social activist Anna Hazare's fight against corruption in 2011. The film received little praise from critics and underperformed at the box office earning ₹675 million (US$8.1 million) domestically. Following an appearance in the poorly received romantic comedy Gori Tere Pyaar Mein (2013), Kapoor Khan decreased her workload for the next two years to focus on her marriage and family. She took on smaller parts where she played the love-interest of Ajay Devgn in the action film Singham Returns (2014) and Salman Khan in the drama Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015). The former, in which Kapoor Khan had a role written specifically for her, met with mixed reviews and Kapoor received criticism for taking a role of minimal importance. Conversely, the film was a financial success with a revenue of over ₹1.4 billion (US$17 million). Kabir Khan's Bajrangi Bhaijaan emerged as India's highest-earning film of the year grossing a total of ₹3.20 billion (US$38 million), and earned the National Film Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment. In 2016, Kapoor Khan took on a starring role in Ki & Ka, about gender stereotypes, to which she was particularly drawn for its relevance. Critics were divided in their opinion of the film, but it emerged a financial success grossing over ₹1 billion (US$12 million) worldwide. Meena Iyer of The Times of India mentioned Kapoor as remarkable, and Sukanya Verma considered the actress to be the film's prime asset. She next featured in Udta Punjab (2016), a crime drama that documents the substance abuse endemic in the Indian state Punjab. Kapoor Khan was initially reluctant to do the film due to the length of her role, but agreed after reading the completed script and partially waived her fees to star in it. Udta Punjab generated controversy when the Central Board of Film Certification deemed that the film represented Punjab in a negative light. The Bombay High Court later cleared the film for exhibition with one scene cut. Rediff.com stated that the film relies on her character, and Mehul S. Thakkar of Deccan Chronicle wrote that she was successful in delivering such a strong performance. For her performance, Kapoor Khan received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the Filmfare and Zee Cine award ceremonies. ### Comedies and professional expansion (2018–present) Following the birth of her first child, Kapoor Khan was persuaded by her husband to return to acting. She was keen to work on a project that would accommodate her parental commitments and found it in Shashanka Ghosh's female buddy film, Veere Di Wedding (2018). Initially approached for the project in 2016, the makers rewrote Kapoor Khan's role to accommodate her pregnancy, but the lack of maternity insurance in India led filming to begin after she gave birth. She liked the idea of telling a story of friendship and love from a female perspective, which she believed was rare in Hindi film, and was pleased to work with three other leading ladies. Anna M. M. Vetticad praised the film for portraying women with "agency, flaws, humanity and, above all, a sense of humour", and took note of Kapoor Khan's restrained performance. With a worldwide gross of over ₹1.38 billion (US$17 million), Veere Di Wedding emerged as one of the highest-grossing female-led Hindi films. Kapoor Khan reteamed with Akshay Kumar in Good Newwz (2019), a comedy about two couples' tryst with in vitro fertilisation. Mint's Udita Jhunjunwala wrote that it is "hard to keep your eyes off Kapoor Khan". She received Best Actress nominations at Filmfare, IIFA and Zee Cine Awards, and the film earned over ₹3 billion (US$36 million) to emerge as the fifth highest-grossing Hindi film of the year. She next took a supporting role in Angrezi Medium (2020), a spiritual sequel to Hindi Medium. According to her, it was a deliberate attempt to move away from her comfort zone; she filmed her role in 10 days while she was accompanying her husband on his film shoot in London. The feature released in India amid the COVID-19 pandemic and its commercial performance was affected due to the closing of the cinemas. Nandini Ramnath of Scroll.in commended her "ability to glitter in a handful of moments", but Vinayak Chakravorty for Outlook thought the portions involving Kapoor Khan were inessential to the story. In 2022, Kapoor Khan starred in an adaptation of Forrest Gump, titled Laal Singh Chaddha, starring Aamir Khan in the title role. She played Rupa, a troubled aspiring actress; Devesh Sharma of Filmfare opined that her performance "filled with angst and grit" was one of the best in her career. Amidst a significant campaign by Hindu nationalists to boycott the film due to Aamir Khan's political affiliations, Laal Singh Chaddha failed to recoup its estimated production budget of ₹1.5 billion (US$18 million). She received another Best Actress nomination at Filmfare. Eager to work in the thriller genre, Kapoor Khan signed on for two such films: Jaane Jaan and The Buckingham Murders (both 2023). She has said that these projects would mark the beginning of a new phase in her career, in which she would focus more on artistic merit than stardom. Her roles in them marked a departure from the glamorous roles she had a reputation for portraying. Jaane Jaan, a Netflix film adaptation of Higashino Keigo’s novel The Devotion of Suspect X from filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh, starred her as a single mother involved in a murder. The Hindu's Shilajit Mitra commended her "brisk, unfussy performance" and appreciated her for playing "as part of a team, complementing instead of trying to commandeer scenes". In terms of global viewing hours, the film emerged as the most-watched Indian film on Netflix in 2023. Hansal Mehta's The Buckingham Murders starred her as a detective in a small town in Buckinghamshire, for which she modelled her character on Kate Winslet's role in Mare of Easttown. The film, shot predominantly in English, marked her first production venture. It premiered at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival. WION's Shomini Sen commended Kapoor Khan's restrained portrayal of a deglamourised character. It had a theatrical release the following year, where it had poor box-office returns. Kapoor Khan returned to commercial cinema with the female-led heist comedy Crew (2024), co-starring Tabu and Kriti Sanon. For their roles as flight attendants, the trio received training from former cabin crew members. Outlook's Garima Das praised her look and comic timing. The film emerged as another female-led commercial success for Kapoor Khan after Veere Di Wedding, and its success led Box Office India to credit her amongst the most successful Hindi film actresses of all time. She next reprised her role amongst an ensemble in the Cop Universe sequel Singham Again, representing the character of Sita. In his negative review for NDTV, Saibal Chatterjee lamented how Kapoor Khan's character was reduced to being "projected as hapless and vulnerable". Singham Again had modest box-office returns on its high production budget. ## Other work ### Fashion and publication Alongside her acting work, Kapoor has established a career as a designer. During her five-year association with the retail chain Globus, Kapoor became the first Indian actress to launch her own line of clothing for women; she described the collaboration as being "special" and "reflective of my personal sense of style". Her collection made its debut several months later in stores across India, and was well received. Following the end of her contract with Globus, she expressed a desire to work with a design house to release her clothing line internationally, but later explained that those plans were on hold. In August 2018, Kapoor Khan collaborated with Lakmé Cosmetics to launch her own line of cosmetics. In 2009, Kapoor worked with nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar on Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight, a book on the principles of healthy eating habits. Published by Random House, the book was well received by critics, and sold 10,000 copies within its first twenty days. A follow-up, Women and The Weight Loss Tamasha, was released two years later. It addressed the weight loss concerns and eating habits of women in various parts of their life, and featured Kapoor in a voice-over for the audiobook. In 2013, Kapoor released her autobiographical memoir, The Style Diary of a Bollywood Diva, which was criticised by Mint for its "too-breezy" writing. Co-written alongside Rochelle Pinto, it became the first book to be launched under the Shobhaa De imprint of Penguin Books—a set of series that included celebrity memoirs, guides and biographies. Later that year, she collaborated with Diwekar for the third time on The Indian Food Wisdom and The Art of Eating Right, a documentary film about nutrition. In 2021, Kapoor Khan released Pregnancy Bible (co-authored with Aditi Shah Bhimjani), which became a commercial success. ### Philanthropy During her years in the film industry, Kapoor has been actively involved in promoting children's education and the safety of women. In June 2010, she took part in the international campaign 1GOAL Education for All, and was appointed ambassador for the Shakti Campaign—a project launched by NDTV to combat violence against women—in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. Two years later, Kapoor Khan launched Channel V's anti-rape mobile app 'VithU'; she stated that with an increasing amount of violence against women in India, "[i]t [was] important for actors to stand up for issues because they can reach out to a lot of people." In January 2014, Kapoor Khan began working with UNICEF to advocate the education of girls and increase quality based education in India. Speaking of her association, she expressed hope in creating places "where children feel safe and secure, and where interactive and creative tools are used to ensure that children are happy and learning." During the first year, Kapoor Khan visited schools in the states of Rajasthan and Maharashtra where she interacted with students and participated in fundraising events hosted by the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya organisation in the Jalna district. Along with UNICEF India's Goodwill Ambassador (Sharmila Tagore), Kapoor Khan hosted a charity dinner to help raise awareness for the development of underprivileged kids, and launched the 'Child-Friendly School and Systems' (CFSS) package. She later donated an equivalent amount of the funds raised during a joint initiative by UNICEF and Groupon for a higher-quality learning environment in Indian schools. She was elevated as a national UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for India in May 2024. The following year, she awarded 31 students and 5 teachers for their contribution towards the field of education in Chhattisgarh at the concluding ceremony of Child Rights Protection week. Also that year, Kapoor Khan provided a voice-over for the documentary film Girl Rising: Woh Padhegi, Woh Udegi [She will learn, she will fly] for the organisation of the same name, and produced a documentary on women's empowerment. In June 2016, she spoke at an event organised by UNICEF in Lucknow to promote menstrual hygiene management. In 2018 she launched UNICEF's "Every Child Alive" campaign to promote affordable and quality health care for mothers and their newborn. In May 2018, she was invited as a keynote speaker for a Mother's Day event in New Delhi organised by UNICEF. Additionally, Kapoor has made public appearances to support other charitable organisations. She performed at a fundraiser for the World Youth Peace Summit in November 2003, and participated in a concert to raise money for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. She visited Indian jawans (troops) in Rajasthan, for a special Holi weekend episode of NDTV's reality show Jai Jawaan. In 2010, Kapoor adopted the village of Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh as part of NDTV's Greenathon Campaign, to provide the village with a regular supply of electricity. Four years later, she participated in a campaign to raise awareness on hunger and malnutrition in the world and made donations to the Kashmir flood relief. In September 2016, Kapoor Khan attended the inaugural of Global Citizen India—a joint initiative by the music festival of the same name and The Global Education and Leadership Foundation. The following year, she became the brand ambassador for Swasth Immunised India, a campaign launched by the Network18 Group and Serum Institute of India to promote immunisation for children. ### Stage performances, radio and television presenting Kapoor has participated in several stage shows and world tours since 2002. Her first tour (Heartthrobs: Live in Concert (2002) with Hrithik Roshan, Karisma Kapoor, Arjun Rampal and Aftab Shivdasani) was successful in the United States and Canada. At the end of that year, she performed with several other Bollywood stars at Kings Park Stadium in Durban, South Africa in the show Now or Never. Four years later, Kapoor returned to the stage with six other Bollywood celebrities in the successful Rockstars Concert world tour. The concert was originally scheduled to commence in April 2006, but was postponed due to the arrest of Salman Khan. It later began the following month and was staged in 19 cities across the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. In 2008, Kapoor performed in Shah Rukh Khan's Temptation Reloaded 2008, a series of concerts in a number of countries. The show (which also featured Arjun Rampal, Katrina Kaif, Ganesh Hegde, Javed Ali and Anusha Dandekar) debuted at the Rotterdam Ahoy venue in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Several months later she again joined Khan, Rampal and Kaif to perform for an audience of 15,000 at Dubai's Festival City Arena. In 2018, Kapoor Khan collaborated with Ishq FM to host a radio show "What Women Want". The show was well-received, earning Kapoor Khan a nomination at the New York Festivals Radio Awards for "Best Talk Show Host", and later renewed for three more seasons. The following year, she featured as a talent judge for the seventh season of the dance reality show Dance India Dance. ## Public image Known for her nonchalant relationship with the media, Kapoor has gained a reputation for discussing her private life with no reservations. As a child she regularly attended award ceremonies and events with her family, and would also accompany Karisma on-set during filming. In an interview with Filmfare, she explained that growing up in a film family helped her develop a sense of professionalism and dedication towards her craft. Kapoor's private life has been the subject of media attention in India, with frequent press coverage of her weight and of her relationship with actor Saif Ali Khan. The couple—dubbed "Saifeena" by the entertainment media—has been one of the country's most-reported celebrity stories since 2007, and Kapoor Khan gave birth to their sons in 2016 and 2021. While a segment of the press has described Kapoor as friendly and extremely close to her family, others have criticised her for being arrogant and vain—an image she gained in the wake of her superficial character, Poo, in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... (2001). She subsequently featured in films portraying similar characters, and this further established her off- and on-screen personae. Before the release of Chameli (2004), in which she played a sex worker, Kapoor stated that "there is a certain image that people identify you with [and] [i]t always follows you whichever role you play. I am trying to transgress this image and become more screen-friendly than image-friendly." Chameli helped Kapoor reinvent her on-screen persona, and she later explained that her honesty and openness was often perceived by the media as arrogance. Kapoor is also known for her assertive and moody nature, and her outspoken views and independence have been singled out for making major contributions to her career. In an early interview, she confessed to being an introvert yet blunt, reasoning: "Total faith and complete belief in myself is my attitude towards life, films and virtually everything else. I am all about doing what I feel is right. It is not easy to pin me down as I can be a bundle of contradictions." Journalist Subhash K. Jha explained that while this approach has sometimes cost her professionally and made her lose out significant projects, it has made her "a favourite among the generation that believes in self-regard being the highest form of creativity". Meanwhile, Anu Ahuja suggested that Kapoor's demeanour is an act; she is "cold and unapproachable so that no one will act funny with her". Kapoor is considered one of the most popular Bollywood celebrities in India. Her look and performances have established her as a style icon for young women. In a 2009 poll conducted by Daily News and Analysis, Kapoor was voted one of India's most popular icons; with her partner Saif Ali Khan, she was listed amongst the top celebrity endorsers for brands and products worldwide. She became the only Indian actress to be featured on CNNGo's list of "Who Mattered Most in India", and was later selected by Verve for its list of the country's most powerful women from 2008 to 2013 and in 2016. In June 2010, Kapoor was named "India's Most Beautiful Woman" by the Indian edition of People magazine. In 2013, she was selected by India Today for its list of the country's most influential women. In 2024, PVR INOX launched the "Kareena Kapoor Khan Film Festival" to celebrate her 25 years in Hindi cinema, marking the first film festival dedicated to an Indian actress. From 2012 to 2018, Kapoor Khan has featured on Forbes India's "Celebrity 100", a list based on the income and popularity of India's celebrities, peaking at the seventh position in 2012 with an estimated annual earning of ₹735 million (US$8.8 million). As of 2024, Kapoor is India's highest tax-paying female celebrity. ## Performances: technique and analysis Kapoor relies on her instincts and spontaneity as an actor. She is known to commit heavily to each role, and refrains from rehearsing for a project. Commenting on this, director Rajkumar Hirani said "I usually have a habit of conducting rehearsals for my actors, but she insisted on not having them as it would affect her spontaneity. She really surprised me with a couple of emotional scenes which we canned in just one take." Karan Johar described Kapoor as a "natural", explaining that "she has no craft, grammar or process attached to her acting [...] It is a great sense of cinema that can keep her going." According to Rensil D'Silva (who directed her in Kurbaan), "Kareena [..] is instinctive and has emotional intelligence. She absorbs the situation and performs accordingly. Discussing the scene, in fact, harms her." In 2010, Rediff.com noted: "[E]ven though a lot of her starring roles have been forgettable, [a] look at her filmography now, however, would show a more thoughtful selection of roles [...] playing to her strengths." Her portrayal of a series of superficial characters at the start of her career were criticised; film historian Gyan Prakash explained that these roles "tended to infantilise her, packaging her as daddy's little girl, all bubble and no fizz". Critics noted Chameli (2004) as her coming of age, claiming that "a new actor in her was discovered". Following her portrayal of a variety of character types in Chameli, Dev (2004), Omkara (2006) and Jab We Met (2007), Kapoor was noted for her versatility. In 2010, Filmfare magazine included two of her performances—from Omkara and Jab We Met—in its list of "80 Iconic Performances". India Today labelled her "the most versatile female lead in the industry", noting that she "play[s] her roles with trademark spunk". Manjula Sen of The Telegraph wrote in 2008 that although Kapoor had the worst success ratio among her contemporaries, her marketability remained unaffected. Sen believed Kapoor's strength lies in her being versatile; she is "effortlessly honest in her performances. It is a candour that spills over in her personal conduct." Writing for News18, Rituparna Chatterjee spoke of her transformation to date: "[A]fter 40 films and 10 years of fighting off competition from some of the most versatile actors of her generation, Kareena has matured into a bankable actor reinventing herself with surprising ease." In 2004, Kapoor placed third on Rediff's list of "Top Bollywood Female Stars". She was later ranked seventh and fifth in 2005 and 2006 respectively, and returned to third place in 2007. In January 2011, Kapoor placed fourth on Rediff's list of "Top 10 Actresses of 2000–2010". Kapoor featured in Box Office India's "Top Bollywood Actresses" list for thirteen years, and ranked first for five consecutive years (2007–2011) and in its "All Time Top Actress" list. ## Accolades Kapoor has received six Filmfare Awards out of fifteen nominations. For her role in Refugee, Kapoor was awarded the Best Female Debut in 2000. She earned a special jury recognition for Chameli (2003), and two Critics Award for Best Actress for Dev (2004) and Omkara (2006). Kapoor later received the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress for Jab We Met (2007) and We Are Family (2010) respectively. ## See also - List of Indian film actresses

MLS Cup 2019

2019 edition of the MLS Cup

MLS Cup 2019 was the 24th edition of the MLS Cup, the championship match of Major League Soccer (MLS), and took place on November 10, 2019, at CenturyLink Field in Seattle, Washington, United States. The soccer match was contested by Seattle Sounders FC and Toronto FC to determine the champion of the 2019 season. It was a rematch of the 2016 and 2017 editions of the MLS Cup, which were won by Seattle and Toronto, respectively. This was the third final for both teams and the first MLS Cup to be hosted by the Sounders, as both of the previous Seattle–Toronto finals were held at BMO Field in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Sounders won 3–1 to claim their second MLS Cup title in front of 69,274 spectators at CenturyLink Field, which set a new stadium attendance record. They scored three goals in the second half, beginning with a deflected shot by Kelvin Leerdam and followed by strikes from substitute Víctor Rodríguez (later named the match MVP) and Raúl Ruidíaz. Jozy Altidore scored a late consolation goal for Toronto in stoppage time. The match marked the conclusion of the 2019 MLS Cup Playoffs, which was contested by fourteen teams under a new single-elimination format that replaced the former two-legged ties. As a result, this was the earliest calendar date for the MLS Cup showdown since 2002. The defending MLS Cup champions, Atlanta United FC, were eliminated in the Eastern Conference Finals by Toronto FC. As MLS Cup champions, Seattle qualified for the 2020 CONCACAF Champions League and the later-cancelled 2020 Campeones Cup. ## Road to the final The MLS Cup is the post-season championship of Major League Soccer (MLS), a professional club soccer league in the United States and Canada. The 2019 season was the 24th in MLS history and was contested by 24 teams organized into the Eastern and Western conferences. Each club played 34 matches during the regular season from March to October, facing each team in their conference twice and those in the other conference once. The playoffs, which ran from October to early November, were contested over four rounds by the top seven clubs in each conference. Each round had a single-elimination match hosted by the higher-seeded team, a change from the two-legged ties used in previous seasons; the top team in each conference was also given a bye to the Conference Semifinals. The shortened playoff schedule—made possible by removing second legs—moved the date of the final to November 10, its earliest staging since 2002. The finalists, Seattle Sounders FC and Toronto FC, played each other in the MLS Cup final for the third time in four years, following their participation in the 2016 and 2017 finals. Both matches were hosted in Toronto, with the 2016 cup won by Seattle in a penalty shootout and the 2017 cup won by Toronto in regulation time. The two teams had met 14 times in regular season play, with the Sounders the winner in nine of those matches. Seattle and Toronto played each other once in the 2019 regular season; the Sounders won 3–2 at home in the April match. ### Seattle Sounders FC Seattle Sounders FC played in their third MLS Cup final in four seasons, having won in their first appearance in 2016 under manager Brian Schmetzer. The team had qualified for the playoffs in all of their eleven MLS seasons and finished as runner-up in MLS Cup 2017. In 2018, the team finished second in the Western Conference through a late-season winning streak but were knocked out by the Portland Timbers in the Conference Semifinals during a penalty shootout. During the 2019 offseason, the Sounders lost defensive midfielder and captain Osvaldo Alonso, who was released into free agency and signed by Minnesota United FC. The Sounders made few offseason moves; they signed several homegrown players for use by their affiliate team and went winless in preseason matches. The team lost just one of its first thirteen matches of the season. In early May, the Sounders signed center-back Xavier Arreaga as a Designated Player and left-back Joevin Jones upon his return to the team from the 2. Bundesliga. Later that month, center-back Chad Marshall retired. The team lost several players to injuries and international call-ups in June and had a three-match losing streak before recovering to win four matches in late June and early July. In early August, defender Román Torres received a ten-match suspension for violating the league's performance-enhancing substances policy. Also that month, the team went winless for four matches before a win against the Portland Timbers. Seattle won four of their last seven matches and clinched a playoff berth; they finished second in the Western Conference behind Los Angeles FC (LAFC), who won the Supporters' Shield and set league records for points and goal differential. In the first round of the playoffs, Seattle hosted FC Dallas. Goals from Raúl Ruidíaz and Jordan Morris allowed Seattle to take a 2–1 lead in the first half; Dallas's Matt Hedges tied the match in the 64th minute, but Morris briefly restored the Sounders' lead before the match was tied 3–3 by the end of regulation time. In extra time, Morris completed his first career hat-trick with a goal in the 113th minute to cap a 4–3 victory. Seattle went on to host Real Salt Lake in the Conference Semifinals, winning 2–0 with a goal and assist from Nicolás Lodeiro in the second half. Gustav Svensson opened the scoring in the 64th minute by heading in a corner kick taken by Lodeiro. In the 81st minute, Lodeiro scored on a counterattack. The team extended their home playoff winning streak to eleven matches. The Sounders traveled to play Los Angeles FC in the Western Conference Final at Banc of California Stadium. LAFC took the lead in the 17th minute through a free kick by Eduard Atuesta, but Seattle scored twice on transitions within nine minutes with goals by Ruidíaz and Lodeiro. In the second half, Ruidíaz scored his second from just outside the 18-yard (16 m) box. The team kept their lead and stifled the LAFC offense, led by MLS scoring leader Carlos Vela, to complete a 3–1 upset victory that returned the Sounders to the MLS Cup final. ### Toronto FC Toronto FC won their first MLS Cup in 2017 and completed the first domestic treble in MLS history, as they had also won the Supporters' Shield and Canadian Championship during the same season. The team finished the 2018 season in ninth place in the Eastern Conference, failing to qualify for the playoffs, and lost key players Sebastian Giovinco and Víctor Vázquez to teams in the Middle East. General manager of five years Tim Bezbatchenko also left the club to take on a role with Columbus Crew SC, but head coach Greg Vanney remained for his sixth season with Toronto. During the preseason, Toronto's new general manager Ali Curtis signed several MLS returnees, including midfielder Nick DeLeon and defender Laurent Ciman. The club also acquired attacking midfielder Alejandro Pozuelo from Genk on a Designated Player contract. The club began their season in the CONCACAF Champions League, having qualified as the winners of the Canadian Championship; they lost 5–1 on aggregate to Panamanian club Club Independiente in the round of 16. Toronto opened the MLS regular season with three wins against Eastern Conference opponents, tying a franchise record for best start. In their next thirteen games, they earned only two more wins and went on an eight-match winless streak. Several key players were called away to their national teams for the Gold Cup but returned to begin the second half of the season with four wins in eight matches by the end of July. During the summer transfer window, Toronto signed U.S. defender Omar Gonzalez on his return from Liga MX, Venezuelan midfielder Erickson Gallardo, and midfielder Nicolas Benezet on loan from French club Guingamp. Gonzalez's addition alongside Patrick Mullins provided additional depth for the team's defense, which had struggled during the Gold Cup window. In their last ten regular season matches, Toronto went undefeated with four wins and six draws, finishing fourth in the Eastern Conference. Forward Jozy Altidore left the final match of the regular season with a quadriceps injury that kept him out of the playoffs. The team also lost the Canadian Championship Final to the Montreal Impact in September, leaving them without a berth in the 2020 CONCACAF Champions League. In the first round of the playoffs, Toronto hosted fifth-place D.C. United at BMO Field. They took a half-time lead through a goal by Marky Delgado, who capitalized on a goalkeeping mistake from Bill Hamid. Lucas Rodríguez equalized for D.C. in stoppage time at the end of the second half, forcing the match into extra time. Toronto then scored four unanswered goals, including two in the first five minutes from Richie Laryea and Jonathan Osorio. Osorio added his second in the 103rd minute and was followed two minutes later by Nick DeLeon to complete a 5–1 victory in the first half of extra time. The team traveled to play top-seeded New York City FC (NYCFC) in the Conference Semifinals, earning a 2–1 victory at Citi Field. After a scoreless first half, Pozuelo scored two minutes into the second half after a misplayed header from New York's Maxime Chanot fell to him. NYCFC equalized through a shot by Ismael Tajouri-Shradi, who made a late run into the box in the 69th minute, but Toronto earned a penalty in the 90th minute that was converted by Pozuelo with a Panenka for a 2–1 win. Toronto continued to the Eastern Conference Final, where they faced defending MLS Cup champions Atlanta United FC at their home stadium. Atlanta took the lead in the fourth minute through a goal by Julian Gressel. Minutes later, Atlanta was awarded a penalty kick for a foul by Michael Bradley, but the 11th-minute penalty taken by Josef Martínez was saved by goalkeeper Quentin Westberg. Two minutes later, Benezet scored with a curling shot from the edge of the box to equalize for Toronto. Toronto completed their 2–1 upset victory with a 25-yard (75 ft) strike from Nick DeLeon that beat goalkeeper Brad Guzan. The team reached the MLS Cup final, their third in four seasons, on a thirteen-match unbeaten streak across MLS competitions. ### Summary of results - Note: In all results below, the score of the finalist is given first (H: home; A: away). ## Venue and preparations MLS Cup 2019 was hosted by the Sounders at their home stadium, CenturyLink Field in Seattle, Washington. The Sounders had finished the regular season with six more points than Toronto and earned the right to host the final. It was the venue's second time as MLS Cup host, as it hosted the 2009 edition as a neutral-site venue. The 69,000-seat stadium opened in 2002 as a shared venue for the National Football League's Seattle Seahawks and a future MLS team that became the Sounders seven years later. The Sounders announced that they would open all seating areas in the stadium's upper deck for the MLS Cup final, making a total of 69,000 seats available, a change from earlier playoff games that were limited to 37,722 seats. Tickets were distributed to season ticket holders after the Eastern Conference Final, selling 50,000 seats, and were released for public sale beginning November 1. The remaining tickets sold out within 20 minutes of the public release, including 3,000 allocated to away fans by the league. Prices for tickets on secondary markets peaked at an average of $622, surpassing all but one Seattle sporting event on SeatGeek. The club released a limited number of standing-room only tickets at the box office prior to the match; those also sold out. The Sounders hosted several fan events during the MLS Cup weekend, including the installation of a giant replica of the Philip F. Anschutz Trophy at Pike Place Market and the lighting of several city landmarks in the team's primary color, rave green. The MLS Cup trophy was also taken on a tour of the city and displayed at several landmarks, arriving aboard a state ferry and being sent with former Sounders goalkeeper Kasey Keller to the Space Needle. The club also organized a viewing party and rally at Occidental Park with a concert by Sounders minority owner Macklemore and appearances by local sports stars. A set of seismographs was temporarily installed inside and outside the stadium by the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network to record fan reactions to events; they recorded three large spikes corresponding to the three goals, which generated activity comparable to the Beast Quake at an NFL playoffs game in 2011. Sound Transit ran several special Sounder commuter train trips to King Street Station to accommodate the expected number of fans. A scheduled closure on State Route 520 between Seattle and the Eastside was modified to allow Seattle-bound traffic to travel on the day of the match. ## Broadcasting The match was broadcast in the United States in English on ABC and in Spanish on Univision; ABC would carry the match on its over-the-air stations for the first time since 2008. In Canada, coverage was provided by TSN4 in English and TVA Sports in French. In Central and South America, the match was broadcast by ESPN International in Spanish and Portuguese. On ABC, ESPN's Jon Champion called the play-by-play with color commentator Taylor Twellman, who also hosted previews on SportsCenter and ESPN+. The Univision broadcast featured Jorge Luis López Salido [es], Raúl Guzmán, Diego Balado, and Marcelo Balboa. The TSN broadcast, which included a simulcast on TSN Radio 1050 in the Toronto area, was headlined by play-by-play commentator Luke Wileman and color analyst Steven Caldwell. On ESPN International, Spanish commentary was provided by Mauricio Pedroza [es] and Herculez Gomez in Central America, and Hernán De Lorenzi [es] and Pedro Wolff in South America. Portuguese commentary was done by Everaldo Marques [pt] and Gustavo Hofman. The ABC broadcast averaged 823,000 viewers and peaked in the second half with 1.1 million viewers, including a 13.2 local rating in the Seattle–Tacoma market. The Univision broadcast averaged 447,000 viewers; the TSN4 broadcast in Canada averaged 748,000 viewers. ## Match ### Summary The match began at 12:08 p.m. local time, with cloudy skies and a kickoff temperature of 53 °F (12 °C). The U.S. national anthem was performed by Pearl Jam's Mike McCready on his electric guitar as the Emerald City Supporters unveiled a tifo that was choreographed with a card display from the entire stadium. Both teams fielded most of their regular starting lineups, with Seattle's Román Torres in place of Xavier Arreaga and the replacement of Toronto defender Laurent Ciman with Omar Gonzalez. Allen Chapman was assigned as the head referee for the match, reprising his role from the 2017 Toronto–Seattle final. Toronto had the majority of possession and attacking chances in the first half while in their 4–3–3 formation, while the Sounders responded with counterattacks and defending from turnovers. Seattle goalkeeper Stefan Frei made several saves, including blocks on a pair of shots by Nicolas Benezet and another from Jonathan Osorio, as Toronto controlled possession and made deep runs throughout the first half. In the last minute before first half stoppage time, Sounders forward Raúl Ruidíaz broke away from Toronto defender Omar Gonzalez with a chance to score, but his shot was blocked by the legs of goalkeeper Quentin Westberg. Seattle manager Brian Schmetzer responded at halftime by moving Jordan Morris to the right wing and Joevin Jones to the left, while Toronto made no significant adjustments. The Sounders were able to disrupt Toronto's attacks with runs from the wings and broke the scoring deadlock in the 57th minute by right-back Kelvin Leerdam. He collected a ball from Ruidíaz and attempted a cross to the back-post that was instead deflected into the goal by Toronto defender Justin Morrow. Toronto's players protested that the goal was preceded by a foul on Osorio by Cristian Roldan, but the goal stood and was awarded to Leerdam by match officials after confusion over whether it counted as an own goal. Toronto manager Greg Vanney responded by substituting Benezet for forward Jozy Altidore, who had missed the playoffs with an injury. The attacking momentum of the match changed in Seattle's favor, as the Sounders found several chances that they were unable to finish. Víctor Rodríguez, who had entered the match as a substitute in the 60th minute, added a second goal for Seattle in the 76th minute with a strike from atop the penalty area after a laid-off ball from Nicolás Lodeiro. In the 87th minute, Toronto unsuccessfully attempted to halve the lead with a header from Omar Gonzalez that went wide as he collided with Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei. At the end of regulation time, Ruidíaz out-muscled Chris Mavinga while chasing a long overhead ball from Gustav Svensson and beat Westberg to score the team's third and final goal of the match. Altidore earned a consolation goal for Toronto with a header in the third minute of stoppage time as the match ended with a 3–1 scoreline. ### Details ## Post-match The Sounders became the sixth team to win multiple MLS Cup titles and ended a 267-minute scoreless streak in MLS Cup play with Leerdam's goal. The match was the first MLS Cup final since the 2012 edition to feature four or more goals. The announced attendance of 69,274 was the second-highest for an MLS Cup final. The match set a new record for sporting event attendance at CenturyLink Field as well as soccer in the state of Washington. Sounders midfielder Víctor Rodríguez was named the MLS Cup most valuable player for scoring the winning goal; he left the club less than two weeks later with the intent of returning to his native Spain. A victory parade took place on November 12 in Downtown Seattle, running from Westlake Park to a rally at the Seattle Center, and was attended by thousands of fans. The club's two MLS Cup trophies also made several stops around Seattle landmarks as part of a victory tour for fans, including several trips on the state ferry system. The Washington state delegation to the United States Congress introduced congratulatory resolutions to honor the Sounders and their successful season. As MLS Cup champions, the Sounders earned $275,000 in prize money, while Toronto earned $80,000. Seattle also earned a berth in the 2020 CONCACAF Champions League, despite having already qualified in another slot as the highest-ranked regular season team to remain in the playoffs. They were eliminated in the Round of 16 by Honduran club C.D. Olimpia in a penalty shootout at CenturyLink Field following a 4–4 tie on aggregate. The Sounders were also scheduled to host the 2020 Campeones Cup in August against the winner of the Mexican Campeón de Campeones, but the match was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Sounders also went on to play in the 2020 edition of the MLS Cup after a shortened season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They were unable to defend their title, losing 3–0 to hosts Columbus Crew SC.

Ontario Highway 420

Controlled-access highway in Ontario

King's Highway 420, commonly referred to as Highway 420, is a 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario that connects the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) with downtown Niagara Falls. It continues east as a limited-access expressway named Niagara Regional Road 420 to connect with the Rainbow Bridge international crossing between Canada and the United States over the Niagara River; this was part of Highway 420 until 1998. West of the QEW, the freeway ends at an at-grade intersection with Montrose Road (Niagara Regional Road 98). The highway has a speed limit of 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph), making it the only 400-series highway to have a speed limit less than 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph) for its entirety. Originally constructed as a divided four-lane road with two roundabouts, the route of Highway 420 formed part of the QEW in 1940 initially as the southeastern terminus, but after the QEW extension from Niagara Falls to Fort Erie opened in 1941, this bypassed highway became a spur route designated as the Rainbow Bridge Approach. It was assigned a unique route number as part of the 400-series after being upgraded into a freeway in 1972, including construction of a large interchange with the QEW. In 1998, the section of Highway 420 east of Stanley Avenue was transferred to the responsibility of the Regional Municipality of Niagara and redesignated as Regional Road 420. ## Route description At 3.3 km (2.1 mi), Highway 420 is the shortest 400-series highway, travelling through Niagara Falls from Montrose Road to Stanley Avenue, on the outskirts of the city's tourist district. East of Stanley Avenue (Regional Road 102) the highway becomes Niagara Regional Road 420 and is known as Falls Avenue and Newman Hill on approach to the Rainbow Bridge. This portion was designated a part of Highway 420 until 2000, when it was transferred to the City of Niagara Falls and the Regional Municipality of Niagara, although the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO) still assists with the maintenance of it under a Connecting Link agreement. East of Drummond Road, Highway 420 features stylized light fixtures with the letters "ER", which stand for Elizabeth Regina and are a tribute to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Highway 420 begins in the west at a signalized intersection with Montrose Road (Regional Road 98), beyond which it continues as Watson Street through the residential neighbourhood of Greens Corners to Beaverdams Road (Regional Road 53). East of Montrose Road, the highway is a four lane roadway divided by a raised paved median, and passes north of a forest as it approaches a four-level interchange with the QEW. The five parclo ramps provide almost all directional movements, though the QEW off-ramps meet Highway 420 at at-grade intersections. These at-grade connections can be bypassed by a pair of connectors carried by a dual on-and-off ramp flyover that arcs over the CN rail line and the QEW Toronto-bound carriageway, directing Fort Erie-bound QEW traffic onto Highway 420 eastbound and westbound Highway 420 traffic onto the Toronto-bound QEW. Another set of ramps links Toronto-bound QEW traffic to Highway 420 eastbound and Highway 420 westbound to the Fort Erie-bound QEW. East of the QEW, Highway encounters an interchange with Dorchester Road as both cross the Queenston-Chippawa Power Canal. This interchange was originally a traffic circle that was removed in the early 1970s. The numerous lanes from the QEW interchange to the west begin to converge between residential subdivisions east of Dorchester Road, gradually narrowing to four through lanes at the Drummond Road interchange. After passing beneath Portage Road, the route widens on approach to an at-grade intersection with Stanley Avenue. This intersection is the eastern end of both the freeway segment of the route and the signed King's Highway 420; east of Stanley Avenue the route is signed as Niagara Regional Road 420 and known as Falls Avenue. Now separated by a landscaped median, the route progresses eastward, intersecting MacDonald Avenue and providing access to several residential and retail properties that adjoin the road. The route travels within a concrete trench and abruptly curves to the southeast as it passes beneath Victoria Avenue, with which there is a simple interchange. East of this point, the road was named Newman Hill until March 2012. Palmer Avenue and Ontario Avenue pass over the route as it descends a hill towards the Niagara Gorge. At the bottom, the route curves to the southwest, where it provides access to the Rainbow Bridge border crossing into the United States as well as the tourist district of the city. Owing to its association with the number 420 in cannabis culture, Highway 420 is also the location for the annual Cannabis Conference and Protest, usually taking place sometime around April 20. The event includes a march beginning near Niagara Falls and travelling to Highway 420. ## History ### Rainbow Bridge Approach The history of Highway 420 predates its designation by nearly 75 years, tied in with the crossing of the Niagara Gorge between the twin cities of Niagara Falls, Ontario and Niagara Falls, New York. The first level crossing between the two cities was the Honeymoon Bridge, constructed in 1898. The 14 m (46 ft) wide structure spanned 255 m (837 ft) between the Canadian and American sides, 58 m (190 ft) above the Niagara River. Its narrow design proved to be a fatal flaw, and on January 27, 1938, under the weight of a massive ice jam in the river, the structure collapsed. A day later, the owners of the previous bridge—the International Railway Company (IRC)—as well as Ontario Minister of Highways Thomas Baker McQuesten announced intentions to construct a new span; a long political battle ensued for several years over the merits of private or public ownership of border crossings. In the end, the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission (NFBC) paid the IRC $615,000 to purchase the right-of-way of the old bridge as well as the rights to construct the new one. The future Rainbow Bridge was dedicated by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on June 7, 1939, just hours after the couple dedicated the QEW. On May 16, 1940, Samuel Johnson, the vice-chair of the NFBC, and McQuesten, who along with his parliamentary role was chair of the commission, ceremonially turned the first sod for the new bridge using a two-handled shovel. Construction had begun two weeks earlier on May 4. The new bridge was assembled over the following 18 months; the design was prepared by New York engineering firm Waddell & Hardesty and supervised by the Edward Lupfer Corporation, the latter the designers of the Peace Bridge. The new structure was located 167 m (548 ft) downstream from the Honeymoon Bridge, as the gorge is slightly wider at that point, resulting in a 288 m (945 ft) span. Meanwhile, McQuesten was overseeing construction of the QEW between Toronto and Fort Erie. The new dual highway, inspired by German Autobahns, was the first of its kind in Canada. The outbreak of World War II in September 1939 temporarily halted McQuesten's ambitions, as funding was quickly shifted to the war effort. As a result, construction on the new superhighway was put on hold south of Niagara Falls. McQuesten officially opened the QEW on August 23, 1940; the pavement ended south of Lundy's Lane. Despite the war, work began on a link between the opened QEW and the Rainbow Bridge through the centre of Niagara Falls. This link would not be completed in time for the opening of the new bridge. On November 1, 1941, the Rainbow Bridge was officially opened during a simple ceremony. The oldest living couple known to have wed in Niagara Falls, a pair from Pennsylvania, were the first to cross, followed by a newlywed couple from Georgia. This symbolically tied the history of the two bridges together, and was followed by McQuesten and Johnson walking towards the centre of the structure from the Canadian and American sides, respectively, and shaking hands at the centre. Several pyrotechnic explosions at both ends capped the ceremony, and the bridge was opened to traffic. Work continued on the four lane bridge approach throughout 1941, and by mid-1942 it was possible to drive directly from the bridge onto the QEW. The new link featured a traffic circle at Dorchester Road as well as at the QEW. At the time the new link was designated temporarily as part of the QEW (decades before receiving its own unique route number of Highway 420), as a result it was referred to by several names including the Queen Elizabeth Way Extension (and known by locals for decades as the "Queen E Extension") and the Rainbow Bridge Approach. At the same time construction on QEW between Niagara Falls and Fort Erie, was underway, but the ongoing war delayed its completion. As an interim measure, four gravel lanes of the highway was opened during the summer of 1941, then two lanes of pavement were laid in 1946, and the four-lane extension was fully paved and opened on October 14, 1956. Bypassed by the new QEW extension to Fort Erie in 1941, the Niagara Falls bridge approach became a spur route that was no longer part of the QEW so it was officially named the Rainbow Bridge Approach for the next three decades. ### Upgrade to freeway During the mid-1960s, the Department of Highways examined the possibility of extending the freeway portion of the route east towards the Rainbow Bridge. They began to purchase properties lining Roberts Street in 1966. In 1971, construction began on a four-level interchange between the QEW and the Rainbow Bridge Approach. This removed the two traffic circles along the approach. The interchange between the QEW and Lundy's Lane (Highway 20) was also removed; instead, the Rainbow Bridge Approach ends with an at-grade intersection with Montrose Road which in turn connects to Lundy's Lane. By April 1972, the Rainbow Bridge Approach was designated as Highway 420. In 1998, the Niagara Falls Transportation Study was released, recommending that Roberts Street be rebuilt as a gateway to the city as opposed to a freeway. Highway 420 east of Stanley Avenue was transferred to Niagara Region. In the early 2000s, Highway 420 from the QEW interchange to Drummond Road was reconstructed with high-mast lighting poles and an Ontario tall-wall concrete median Jersey barrier, similar to the upgrades that other high-traffic provincial freeways received around that time. The rest of the route from Drummond Road eastwards (including Regional Road 420) was instead upgraded to 15-metre (49 ft) and 12-metre (39 ft) decorative "ER" lightposts, to commemorate the route's historical status as the original routing of the QEW and its historical tie to the Queen Mother. The "ER" style lighting poles are themselves a historical decorative lighting pole model, discontinued decades earlier, that was revived originally for the early 2000s Highway 420 reconstruction and would also be later used for QEW's bridges in Mississauga, Oakville, and St. Catherines. The Drummond Road and Portage Road overpasses that originally built in 1941 and rehabilitated in the early 1970s were demolished in 2004; their new replacement bridges plus Highway 420's concrete median barrier feature decorative stone facades, which in combination with the "ER" light poles restores the heritage look that was lost in the 1970s reconstruction. On September 23, 2010, Highway 420 was designated as the Niagara Veterans Memorial Highway. On January 31, 2012, Niagara Regional Council approved the renaming of Roberts Street and Newman Hill as an extension of Falls Avenue, beginning March 1. Prior to this, Falls Avenue curved into Newman Hill at the Rainbow Bridge. In 2016, the flyovers of the Highway 420-QEW interchange were rehabilitated. ## Exit list |}

Sadruddin Aga Khan

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (1933–2003)

Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan (17 January 1933 – 12 May 2003) was a French-born statesman and activist who served as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1966 to 1977, during which he reoriented the agency's focus beyond Europe and prepared it for an explosion of complex refugee issues. He was also a proponent of greater collaboration between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and UN agencies. The Prince's interest in ecological issues led him to establish the Bellerive Foundation in the late 1970s, and he was a knowledgeable and respected collector of Islamic art. Born in Paris, France, he was the son of Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan and Princess Andrée Aga Khan. He married twice, but had no children of his own. Prince Sadruddin died of cancer at the age of 70, and was buried in Switzerland. ## Life and career ### Childhood and education Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, he was the only child of Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan III and his French-born third wife, the former Andrée Joséphine Carron. He received his early education in Lausanne, Switzerland, before graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1954 from Harvard College. At Harvard, he lived in Eliot House with Paul Matisse, grandson of French artist Henri Matisse, with future Paris Review founders George Plimpton and John Train, and with Stephen Joyce, grandson of Irish writer James Joyce. Along with Plimpton, he was an editor for the Harvard Lampoon. After three years of post-graduate research at the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Prince Sadruddin began a lifelong career of international service. Although he was raised in Europe by his French mother, his father, who was the 48th hereditary Imam of the Nizari Ismaili Muslims, had a strong influence on him. He recalled that his father "insisted that I learnt the Koran and encouraged me to understand the basic traditions and beliefs of Islam but without imposing any particular views. He was an overwhelming personality but open-minded and liberal." Together with his father Prince Sadruddin traveled widely in Muslim countries, coming into contact with his Islamic roots from a young age. He described Iran as the cradle of his family, though he never lived there. When he was a child, his paternal grandmother used to recite to him the great epic poems of Persian history. He held British, French, Iranian, and Swiss citizenship, and was fluent in French, English, German and Italian, while also speaking some Persian and Arabic. ### UNESCO Prince Sadruddin joined the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1958, and became the Executive Secretary to its International Action Committee for the Preservation of Nubia in 1961. This initiative brought together archaeologists from Eastern Europe and the West at the height of the Cold War. The construction of the Aswan Dam threatened ancient Egyptian treasures including Abu Simbel, the temples of Philae and Kalabsha, and the Christian churches of Nubia. He would later describe it as "one of UNESCO's great achievements" because of the challenging historical context in which it took place—in particular the ongoing tensions in the Middle East and the Cold War. ### UN High Commissioner for Refugees Prince Sadruddin began as a Special Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1959 with a focus on World Refugee Year (1959–1960). The initiative became known for its Stamp Plan, a philatelic programme that raised funds through United Nations member countries, as well as the support of the Universal Postal Union. At the time, the UNHCR's resources were primarily focused on supporting refugees crossing from Eastern Europe. In January 1966, Prince Sadruddin was appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees after serving for three years as Deputy High Commissioner. At the age of 33 he became the youngest person ever to lead the UNHCR. For the next twelve years he directed the UN refugee agency through one of its most difficult periods, coordinating the international response to the 1971 Bangladesh crisis that uprooted 10 million people, the 1972 exodus of hundreds of thousands of Hutus from Burundi to Tanzania, and the Vietnamese boat people tragedy of the mid-1970s. In 1972, Prince Sadruddin played a key role in finding new homes for tens of thousands of South Asians expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin. Prince Sadruddin's determination not to discriminate between European and Third World refugees helped prepare the UNHCR for a change in the landscape of internationally displaced persons. During the 1950s, between 200,000 and 300,000 refugees of European origin required assistance. By the 1970s the European refugee problems were mostly solved, but had been replaced by millions of displaced persons in the Third World. He had widened the UNHCR mandate well beyond its original focus on Eastern Europe, extending the organisation's reach to refugees from Palestine, Vietnam, Angola and Algeria. As the scale and complexity of refugee issues continued to increase, the UNHCR and the international community at large was better positioned to adapt. By the end of 1977 when he chose to step down from the position, he had become the longest-serving UN High Commissioner for Refugees. ### United Nations diplomatic career Prince Sadruddin had, since 1978, been variously: Special Consultant and Chargé de Mission to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Commission and Convenor and co-chairman of the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues and of the Independent Working Group on the UN Financial Emergency. He was later Coordinator for United Nations Humanitarian and Economic Assistance Programmes Relating to the People of Afghanistan and Executive Delegate of the Secretary-General for a United Nations Inter-Agency Humanitarian Programme, which dealt with problems of Iraq's border areas. His appointment in September 1990 as Personal Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Humanitarian Assistance Relating to the Crisis between Iraq and Kuwait required diplomatic finesse. Iraq's President Saddam Hussein was deeply suspicious of the UN, and was loath to do anything that would benefit the country's Shia Muslims. Despite this, Prince Sadruddin was able to successfully negotiate with Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz for the establishment of a UN relief program for tens of thousands of Shia Muslims trapped in worsening conditions in the marshlands of southern Iraq. Prince Sadruddin was nominated and passed over twice for the post of UN Secretary-General. Although he won the 1981 vote, the Soviet Union considered him too Western and vetoed his election. When he was nominated again in 1991, the United States and Britain expressed their disagreement with his belief in a policy of boosting aid to Iraq. ### Environmental protection and advocacy In 1977, Prince Sadruddin, together with Denis de Rougemont and a few other friends, established a Geneva-based think-tank, Groupe de Bellerive (named after Bellerive, the municipality where he lived in Geneva), and a non-profit organisation, the Bellerive Foundation. The foundation collaborated with international institutions, British and Scandinavian bilateral aid organizations, and other NGOs such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). It became a grassroots action group promoting environmental protection, natural resource conservation and the safeguarding of life in all its forms. Initially, Bellerive worked with UNICEF and the United Nations Children's Fund in the struggle against deforestation. Prince Sadruddin was motivated in part by what he called "ecological refugees", who were forced to leave regions that could no longer sustain them due to desertification and other environmental changes. The foundation worked with Swiss specialists to develop low-cost, energy-efficient cooking stoves that relied on renewable energy sources such as methane and biogas. It distributed these among needy rural populations, primarily in Africa. Other areas of concern for Bellerive included the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the protection of threatened species. As a resident of Switzerland, Prince Sadruddin was concerned about the impact of insensitive tourist development and deforestation on the European Alps. At the World Economic Forum in 1990, he launched Alp Action to protect the mountain ecosystem and preserve the Alps' cultural diversity and vitality. The Bellerive Foundation program encouraged eco-tourism, aiming to reduce the impact of outdoor adventure sports on the fragile alpine habitat. During its years of operation, Alp Action successfully launched over 140 projects in seven countries. It found inspiration in the system of national parks of the Canadian Rockies. A long-standing trustee and former vice-president of the World Wide Fund for Nature International, Prince Sadruddin led Bellerive's support for threatened species. Bellerive was also amongst the first organisations to warn of the potential human health hazards of modern intensive farming methods. In May 2006, the activities of the Bellerive Foundation were merged into the Geneva-based Aga Khan Foundation (founded in 1967 by Prince Sadruddin's nephew Karim Aga Khan IV) to form the Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan Fund for the Environment. The US$10 million fund is dedicated to finding practical solutions to environmental problems. The fund concentrates its activities in six areas that were important to Prince Sadruddin: environmental education; natural resource management in fragile zones; nature parks and wildlife reserves; environmentally and culturally appropriate tourism infrastructure; environmental health; and research. ### Death and remembrance Prince Sadruddin died of cancer in Boston, Massachusetts, on 12 May 2003, coincidentally, the same day as his elder half-brother Prince Aly Khan had died 43 years earlier. His body was conveyed to Switzerland, where members of the diplomatic corps, government officials and close friends were invited to pay their last respects at the Château de Bellerive, and sign books of condolence at various locations around the world. Ruud Lubbers, then UNHCR High Commissioner, expressed the sadness of the UNHCR and the entire humanitarian community, commenting that "he left an indelible print on UNHCR's history—leading the agency through some of the most challenging moments. Sadruddin's name became synonymous with UNHCR." In accordance with his wishes, Prince Sadruddin's burial took place at a private ceremony attended by members of his family. Traditional Muslim ceremonies were led by Sheikh Ahmed Ahmed Ibrahim, who leads the prayers at the mausoleum of the Prince's father, Aga Khan III, in Aswan, Egypt. Last respects were paid beneath the arches of the Château de Bellerive, before the bier was carried to the local cemetery of Collonge-Bellerive. A tribute from the Canton of Geneva read: "The destiny of this family of high Persian nobility, descended from the Prophet Muhammad, is inextricably linked to that of this small European town and to an ambitious project to improve the human condition." The United Nations community celebrated Prince Sadruddin's life at a memorial ceremony held in his honour at its headquarters in New York on 28 October 2003. He was remembered for representing the moral and compassionate side of the international community. Then United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan commented that "he combined respect for humankind with concern for our environment. He worked on behalf of the poor and dispossessed, while celebrating humanity through culture and art." He concluded his tribute by praising Prince Sadruddin as "a role model to many of us ... his example will continue to inspire new world citizens for several generations to come." He was survived by his wife of 31 years, Princess Catherine; his three stepsons Alexandre, Marc and Nicolas; as well as his nephews and niece Prince Karim, Prince Amyn and Princess Yasmin; and his cousin Mme. Francoise Carron. It was Prince Sadruddin's and Princess Catherine's wish that their remains be buried in Egypt. ## Personal life Prince Sadruddin's life was deeply influenced by his family roots and cultural heritage. Prince Sadruddin's grandmother was the granddaughter of the Qajar Emperor Fath'Ali Shah. International service was a family tradition, and throughout his life Prince Sadruddin was surrounded by it. His father held influential roles in British India. He also served two terms as President of the League of Nations. Prince Sadruddin's older half-brother, Prince Aly Khan, was Pakistan's Ambassador to the United Nations. Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, the 49th Imam of the Ismaili Muslims and present Aga Khan, was a nephew to Prince Sadruddin, and is the founder and Chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network. His brother, Prince Amyn, had previously worked with the United Nations before joining the Aga Khan's secretariat. Meanwhile, Prince Sadruddin's niece Princess Yasmin, has devoted herself to the fight against Alzheimer's disease. Prince Sadruddin had a taste for culture, including music, art and literature. He was a familiar figure at music festivals and other cultural events, both in Europe and overseas. His concern for the environment was complemented by his enjoyment of the outdoors; he was a keen skier and an accomplished sailor. While still at Harvard in 1953, Prince Sadruddin became the founding publisher of the Paris Review, which was established with the aim of bringing original creative work to the fore. Every year the Review awards the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction (established by his father) for the best short story that it published in the past year. ### Marriages On 27 August 1957, in Bellerive, Switzerland, Prince Sadruddin married Nina Dyer (1930–1965). An Anglo-Indian fashion model, she was the former wife of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. She converted to Islam, taking the name "Shirin" (lit. "sweetness"). They had no children and divorced in 1962. Dyer committed suicide in 1965. He married Catherine Aleya Beriketti Sursock on November 25, 1972, in the British West Indies. Born in Alexandria, she was the former wife of Lebanese aristocrat Cyril Sursock (son of Nicolas Sursock and Donna Vittoria Serra of the Dukes di Cassano). She and Prince Sadruddin had no children, but from this marriage he gained three stepchildren: Alexandre Sursock (married to Thai Princess Mom Rajawongse Charuvan Rangsit Prayurasakdi), Marc Sursock, and Nicolas Sursock. ### Art collection During his lifetime Prince Sadruddin assembled one of the finest private collections of Islamic art in the world. He became a knowledgeable and respected collector, accumulating a priceless collection of paintings, drawings, manuscripts and miniatures over 50 years. He had also gathered a collection of primitive and African art which he sold sometime prior to 1985. Prince Sadruddin's interest in Islamic art was sparked in his youth by his paternal grandmother's library of Persian books, mystical texts and astrological treatises. While at Harvard in the 1950s, he would make purchases in New York, and eventually began to acquire from dealers in Paris, Geneva and London. He would bid regularly at Sotheby's and Christie's auctions in Europe and North America. For advice, he looked to his friend Stuart Cary Welch, a historian of Islamic art at Harvard University. His collection is vast and diverse, and includes Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Indian pieces dating from the 10th century. One example is a Quranic page of North African origin written with gold lettering in the Kufic script – it is more than 1,000 years old. Prince Sadruddin's Persian roots are well represented in calligraphic as well as pictorial specimens reflecting a range of periods and dynastic patrons. Also included are several examples of Ottoman calligraphies, manuscripts and paintings. Over the years, parts of his collection were exhibited in New York, London, and Zürich, including a touring show, "Princes, Poets and Paladins", which was organized by the British Museum in 1998. The full collection is housed at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, established by Prince Sadruddin's nephew, the present Aga Khan. ## Awards and decorations Prince Sadruddin received several honorary doctorates and national decorations from states as diverse as Pakistan, Poland and the Vatican, as well as the United Nations Human Rights Award. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991. He was awarded the Bourgeois d'Honneur de Geneve, made a Commandeur of the Légion d'honneur of France and a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Sylvester (KCSS) of the Holy See, and was a recipient of the Order of the Nile of Egypt. Furthermore, he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), this for his services to humanitarian causes and the arts. He was an honorary citizen of Patmos, Greece, where he owned a house.

Giant otter

Species of mammal

The giant otter or giant river otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) is a South American carnivorous mammal. It is the longest member of the weasel family, Mustelidae, a globally successful group of predators, reaching up to . Atypical of mustelids, the giant otter is a social species, with family groups typically supporting three to eight members. The groups are centered on a dominant breeding pair and are extremely cohesive and cooperative. Although generally peaceful, the species is territorial, and aggression has been observed between groups. The giant otter is diurnal, being active exclusively during daylight hours. It is the noisiest otter species, and distinct vocalizations have been documented that indicate alarm, aggression, and reassurance. The giant otter ranges across north-central South America; it lives mostly in and along the Amazon River and in the Pantanal. Its distribution has been greatly reduced and is now discontinuous. Decades of poaching for its velvety pelt, peaking in the 1950s and 1960s, considerably diminished population numbers. The species was listed as endangered in 1999 and wild population estimates are typically below 5,000. The Guianas are one of the last real strongholds for the species, which also enjoys modest numbers – and significant protection – in the Peruvian Amazonian basin. It is one of the most endangered mammal species in the Neotropics. Habitat degradation and loss is the greatest current threat. They are also rare in captivity; in 2003, only 60 giant otters were being held. The giant otter shows a variety of adaptations suitable to an amphibious lifestyle, including exceptionally dense fur, a wing-like tail, and webbed feet. The species prefers freshwater rivers and streams, which are usually seasonally flooded, and may also take to freshwater lakes and springs. It constructs extensive campsites close to feeding areas, clearing large amounts of vegetation. The giant otter subsists almost exclusively on a diet of fish, particularly characins and catfish, but may also eat crabs, turtles, snakes and small caimans. It has no serious natural predators other than humans, although it must compete with other predators, such as the Neotropical otters and various crocodilian species, for food resources. ## Name The giant otter has a handful of other names. In Brazil it is known as ariranha, from the Tupi word arerãîa, or onça-d'água, meaning water jaguar. In Spanish, river wolf () and water dog () are used occasionally (though the latter also refers to several different animals) and may have been more common in the reports of explorers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. All four names are in use in South America, with a number of regional variations. "Giant otter" translates literally as nutria gigante and lontra-gigante in Spanish and Portuguese, respectively. Among the Achuar people, they are known as wankanim, among the Sanumá as hadami, and among the Makushi as turara. The genus name, Pteronura, is derived from the Ancient Greek words πτερόν (pteron, feather or wing) and οὐρά (oura, tail), a reference to its distinctive, wing-like tail. ## Taxonomy and evolution The otters form the subfamily Lutrinae within the mustelids and the giant otter is the only member of the genus Pteronura. Two subspecies are currently recognized by the canonical Mammal Species of the World, P. b. brasiliensis and P. b. paraguensis. Incorrect descriptions of the species have led to multiple synonyms (the latter subspecies is often P. b. paranensis in the literature). P. b. brasiliensis is distributed across the north of the giant otter range, including the Orinoco, Amazon, and Guianas river systems; to the south, P. b. paraguensis has been suggested in Paraguay, Uruguay, southern Brazil, and northern Argentina, although it may be extinct in the last three of these four. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) considers the species' presence in Argentina and Uruguay uncertain. In the former, investigation has shown thinly distributed population remnants. P. b. paraguensis is supposedly smaller and more gregarious, with different dentition and skull morphology. Carter and Rosas, however, rejected the subspecific division in 1997, noting the classification had only been validated once, in 1968, and the P. b. paraguensis type specimen was very similar to P. b. brasiliensis. Biologist Nicole Duplaix calls the division of "doubtful value". The earliest fossil evidence of the giant river otter dates to the Late Pleistocene of Argentina, and it was slightly larger than known modern specimens. An extinct genus, Satherium, is believed to be ancestral to the present species, having migrated to the New World during the Pliocene or early Pleistocene. The giant otter shares the South American continent with three of the four members of the New World otter genus Lontra: the Neotropical river otter, the southern river otter, and the marine otter. (The North American river otter (Lontra canadensis) is the fourth Lontra member.) The giant otter seems to have evolved independently of Lontra in South America, despite the overlap. The smooth-coated otter (Lutrogale perspicillata) of Asia may be its closest extant relative; similar behaviour, vocalizations, and skull morphology have been noted. Both species also show strong pair bonding and paternal engagement in rearing cubs. Giant otter fossil remains have been recovered from a cave in the Brazilian Mato Grosso. Phylogenetic analysis by Koepfli and Wayne in 1998 found the giant otter has the highest divergence sequences within the otter subfamily, forming a distinct clade that split away 10 to 14 million years ago. They noted that the species may be the basal divergence among the otters or fall outside of them altogether, having split even before other mustelids, such as the ermine, polecat, and mink. Later gene sequencing research on the mustelids, from 2004, places the divergence of the giant otter somewhat later, between five and 11 million years ago; the corresponding phylogenetic tree locates the Lontra divergence first among otter genera, and Pteronura second, although divergence ranges overlap. ## Physical characteristics The giant otter is clearly distinguished from other otters by morphological and behavioural characteristics. It has the greatest body length of any species in the mustelid family, although the sea otter may be heavier. Males are between in length from head to tail and females between . The animal's well-muscled tail can add a further 70 cm (28 in) to the total body length. Early reports of skins and living animals suggested exceptionally large males of up to ; intensive hunting likely reduced the occurrence of such massive specimens. Weights are between 26 and 32 kg (57 and 71 lb) for males and 22 and 26 kg (49 and 57 lb) for females. The giant otter has the shortest fur of all otter species; it is typically chocolate brown, but may be reddish or fawn, and appears nearly black when wet. The fur is extremely dense, so much so that water cannot penetrate to the skin. Guard hairs trap water and keep the inner fur dry; the guard hairs are approximately 8 millimetres (one-third of an inch) in length, about twice as long as the fur of the inner coat. Its velvety feel makes the animal highly sought after by fur traders and has contributed to its decline. Unique markings of white or cream fur color the throat and under the chin, allow individuals to be identified from birth. Giant otter muzzles are short and sloping and give the head a ball-shaped appearance. The ears are small and rounded. The nose (or rhinarium) is completely covered in fur, with only the two slit-like nostrils visible. The giant otter's highly sensitive whiskers (vibrissae) allow the animal to track changes in water pressure and currents, which aids in detecting prey. The legs are short and stubby and end in large webbed feet tipped with sharp claws. Well suited for an aquatic life, it can close its ears and nose while underwater. At the time of Carter and Rosas's writing, vision had not been directly studied, but field observations show the animal primarily hunts by sight; above water, it is able to recognize observers at great distances. The fact that it is exclusively active during the day further suggests its eyesight should be strong, to aid in hunting and predator avoidance. In other otter species, vision is generally normal or slightly myopic, both on land and in water. The giant otter's hearing is acute and its sense of smell is excellent. The species possesses 2n = 38 chromosomes. ## Biology and behaviour The giant otter is large, gregarious, and diurnal. Early travelers' reports describe noisy groups surrounding explorers' boats, but little scientific information was available on the species until Duplaix's groundbreaking work in the late 1970s. Concern over this endangered species has since generated a body of research. ### Vocalizations The giant otter is an especially noisy animal, with a complex repertoire of vocalizations. All otters produce vocalizations, but by frequency and volume, the giant otter may be the most vocal. Duplaix identified nine distinct sounds, with further subdivisions possible, depending on context. Quick hah barks or explosive snorts suggest immediate interest and possible danger. A wavering scream may be used in bluff charges against intruders, while a low growl is used for aggressive warning. Hums and coos are more reassuring within the group. Whistles may be used as advance warning of nonhostile intent between groups, although evidence is limited. Newborn pups squeak to elicit attention, while older young whine and wail when they begin to participate in group activities. An analysis published in 2014 cataloged 22 distinct types of vocalization in adults and 11 in neonates. Each family of otters was shown to have its own unique audio signature. ### Social structure The giant otter is a highly social animal and lives in extended family groups. Group sizes are anywhere from two to 20 members, but likely average between three and eight. (Larger figures may reflect two or three family groups temporarily feeding together.) Group members share roles, structured around the dominant breeding pair. The species is territorial, with groups marking their ranges with latrines, gland secretions, and vocalizations. At least one case of a change in alpha relationship has been reported, with a new male taking over the role; the mechanics of the transition were not determined. Duplaix suggests a division between "residents", who are established within groups and territories, and nomadic and solitary "transients"; the categories do not seem rigid, and both may be a normal part of the giant otter life cycle. One tentative theory for the development of sociality in mustelids is that locally abundant but unpredictably dispersed prey causes groups to form. Aggression within the species ("intraspecific" conflict) has been documented. Defence against intruding animals appears to be cooperative: while adult males typically lead in aggressive encounters, cases of alpha females guarding groups have been reported. One fight was directly observed in the Brazilian Pantanal in which three animals violently engaged a single individual near a range boundary. In another instance in Brazil, a carcass was found with clear indications of violent assault by other otters, including bites to the snout and genitals, an attack pattern similar to that exhibited by captive animals. While not rare among large predators in general, intraspecific aggression is uncommon among otter species; Ribas and Mourão suggest a correlation to the animal's sociability, which is also rare among other otters. A capacity for aggressive behavior should not be overstated with the giant otter. Researchers emphasize that even between groups, conflict avoidance is generally adopted. Within groups, the animals are extremely peaceful and cooperative. Group hierarchies are not rigid and the animals easily share roles. ### Reproduction and life cycle Giant otters build dens, which are holes dug into riverbanks, usually with multiple entrances and multiple chambers inside. They give birth within these dens during the dry season. In Cantão State Park, otters dig their reproductive dens on the shores of oxbow lakes starting around July, when waters are already quite low. They give birth between August and September, and the young pups emerge for the first time in October and November, which are the months of lowest water when fish concentrations in the dwindling lakes and channels are at their peak. This makes it easier for the adults to catch enough fish for the growing young, and for the pups to learn how to catch fish. The entire group, including nonreproductive adults, which are usually older siblings to that year's pups, collaborates to catch enough fish for the young. Details of giant otter reproduction and life cycle are scarce, and captive animals have provided much of the information. Females appear to give birth year round, although in the wild, births may peak during the dry season. The estrous cycle is 21 days, with females receptive to sexual advances between three and 10 days. Study of captive specimens has found only males initiate copulation. At Tierpark Hagenbeck in Germany, long-term pair bonding and individualized mate selection were seen, with copulation most frequently taking place in water. Females have a gestation period of 65 to 70 days, giving birth to one to five pups, with an average of two. Research over five years on a breeding pair at the Cali Zoo in Colombia found the average interval between litters was six to seven months, but as short as 77 days when the previous litter did not survive. Other sources have found greater intervals, with as long as 21 to 33 months suggested for otters in the wild. Mothers give birth to furred and blind cubs in an underground den near the river shore and fishing sites. Males actively participate in rearing cubs and family cohesion is strong; older, juvenile siblings also participate in rearing, although in the weeks immediately after birth, they may temporarily leave the group. Pups open their eyes in their fourth week, begin walking in their fifth, and are able to swim confidently between 12 and 14 weeks old. They are weaned by nine months and begin hunting successfully soon after. The animal reaches sexual maturity at about two years of age and both male and female pups leave the group permanently after two to three years. They then search for new territory to begin a family of their own. Studies of giant otters in captivity have given indications about the environment necessary to both maintain a physically and behaviorally healthy population and allow successful cub-rearing. These include providing at least the minimum recommended land-to-water area ratio, and that all enclosure land surfaces (both artificial and natural) are nearly entirely covered with the recommended substrate conditions (e.g. tree-bark mulch and soft pebble-free sand/soil). Ensuring that the animals have sufficient privacy from human disturbances (visual and acoustic, from zoo staff or visitors) at parturition and during cub-rearing is also essential, but not sufficient. Insufficient land area proportions and unsuitable substrate conditions in zoos have historically been the primary cause of high cub mortality and physical and behavioral health problems among giant otters. For example, stress to the parents during cub-rearing due to inappropriate enclosure conditions has been the primary reason for cub neglect, abuse and infanticide. In the wild, it has been suggested, although not systematically confirmed, that tourists cause similar stresses: disrupted lactation and denning, reduced hunting, and habitat abandonment are all risks. This sensitivity is matched by a strong protectiveness towards the young. All group members may aggressively charge intruders, including boats with humans in them. The longest documented giant otter lifespan in the wild is eight years. In captivity, this may increase to 17, with an unconfirmed record of 19. The animal is susceptible to a variety of diseases, including canine parvovirus. Parasites, such as the larvae of flies and a variety of intestinal worms, also afflict the giant otter. Other causes of death include accidents, gastroenteritis, infanticide, and epileptic seizures. ### Hunting and diet The giant otter is an apex predator, and its population status reflects the overall health of riverine ecosystems. It feeds mainly on fish, including cichlids, perch, characins (such as piranha), and catfish. One full-year study of giant otter scats in Amazonian Brazil found fish present in all fecal samples. Fish from the order Perciformes, particularly cichlids and perch, were seen in 97% of scats, and Characiformes, such as characins, in 86%. Fish remains were of medium-sized species that seem to prefer relatively shallow water, to the advantage of the visually oriented giant otter. Prey species found were also sedentary, generally swimming only short distances, which may aid the giant otter in predation. Hunting in shallow water has also been found to be more rewarding, with water depth less than 0.6 metres (2.0 ft) having the highest success rate. The giant otter seems to be opportunistic, taking whatever species are most locally abundant. If fish are unavailable, it will also take crabs, snakes, and even small caimans and anacondas. The species can hunt singly, in pairs, and in groups, relying on sharp eyesight to locate prey. In some cases, supposed cooperative hunting may be incidental, a result of group members fishing individually in close proximity; truly coordinated hunting may only occur where the prey cannot be taken by a single giant otter, such as with small anacondas and juvenile black caiman. The giant otter seems to prefer prey fish that are generally immobile on river bottoms in clear water. Prey chase is rapid and tumultuous, with lunges and twists through the shallows and few missed targets. The otter can attack from both above and below, swiveling at the last instant to clamp the prey in its jaws. Giant otters catch their own food and consume it immediately; they grasp the fish firmly between the forepaws and begin eating noisily at the head. Carter and Rosas have found captive adult animals consume around 10% of their body weight daily—about 3 kilograms (7 lb), in keeping with findings in the wild. ## Ecology ### Habitat The species is amphibious, although primarily terrestrial. It occurs in freshwater rivers and streams, which generally flood seasonally. Other water habitats include freshwater springs and permanent freshwater lakes. Four specific vegetation types occur on one important creek in Suriname: riverbank high forest, floodable mixed marsh and high swamp forest, floodable low marsh forest, and grass islands and floating meadows within open areas of the creek itself. Duplaix identified two critical factors in habitat selection: food abundance, which appears to positively correlate to shallow water, and low sloping banks with good cover and easy access to preferred water types. The giant otter seems to choose clear, black waters with rocky or sandy bottoms over silty, saline, and white waters. Giant otters use areas beside rivers for building dens, campsites, and latrines. They clear significant amounts of vegetation while building their campsites. One report suggests maximum areas 28 m (92 ft) long and 15 m (49 ft) wide, well-marked by scent glands, urine, and feces to signal territory. Carter and Rosas found average areas a third this size. Giant otters adopt communal latrines beside campsites, and dig dens with a handful of entrances, typically under root systems or fallen trees. One report found between three and eight campsites, clustered around feeding areas. In seasonally flooded areas, the giant otter may abandon campsites during the wet season, dispersing to flooded forests in search of prey. Giant otters may adopt preferred locations perennially, often on high ground. These can become quite extensive, including "backdoor" exits into forests and swamps, away from the water. Otters do not visit or mark every site daily, but usually patrol all of them, often by a pair of otters in the morning. Research generally takes place in the dry season and an understanding of the species' overall habitat use remains partial. An analysis of dry season range size for three otter groups in Ecuador found areas between 0.45 and 2.79 square kilometres (0.17 and 1.08 sq mi). Utreras presumed habitat requirements and availability would differ dramatically in the rainy season: estimating range sizes of 1.98 to as much as 19.55 square kilometres (0.76 to 7.55 sq miles) for the groups. Other researchers suggest approximately 7 square kilometres (2.7 sq mi) and note a strong inverse correlation between sociality and home range size; the highly social giant otter has smaller home range sizes than would be expected for a species of its mass. Population densities varied with a high of 1.2/km² (3.1/sq mi) reported in Suriname and with a low of 0.154/km² (0.40/sq mi) found in Guyana. In 2021, conservationists at Fundación Rewilding spotted a wild giant otter swimming in the Bermejo River in Impenetrable National Park, located in the Chaco province of northeast Argentina. ### Predation and competition Adult giant otters living in family groups have no known serious natural predators; however, there are some accounts of black caimans in Peru and yacare caimans in the Pantanal preying on giant otters. In addition, solitary animals and young may be vulnerable to attacks by the jaguar, cougar, and anaconda, but this is based on historical reports, not direct observation. Pups are more vulnerable, and may be taken by caiman and other large predators, although adults are constantly mindful of stray young, and will harass and fight off possible predators. When in the water, the giant otter faces danger from animals not strictly preying upon it: the electric eel and stingray are potentially deadly if stumbled upon, and piranha may be capable of at least taking bites out of a giant otter, as evidenced by scarring on individuals. Even if without direct predation, the giant otter must still compete with other predators for food resources. Duplaix documented interaction with the Neotropical otter. While the two species are sympatric (with overlapping ranges) during certain seasons, there appeared to be no serious conflict. The smaller neotropical otter is far more shy, less noisy, and less social; at about a third the weight of the giant otter, it is more vulnerable to predation, hence, a lack of conspicuousness is to its advantage. The neotropical otter is active during twilight and darkness, reducing the likelihood of conflict with the diurnal giant otter. Its smaller prey, different denning habits, and different preferred water types also reduce interaction. Other species that prey upon similar food resources include the caimans and large fish that are themselves piscivores. Gymnotids, such as the electric eel, and the large silurid catfish are among aquatic competitors. Two river dolphins, the tucuxi and Amazon river dolphin, might potentially compete with the giant otter, but different spatial use and dietary preferences suggest minimal overlap. Furthermore, Defler observed associations between giant otters and the Amazon river dolphins, and suggested that dolphins may benefit by fish fleeing from the otters. The spectacled caiman is another potential competitor, but Duplaix found no conflict with the species in Suriname. ## Conservation status The IUCN listed the giant otter as "endangered" in 1999; it had been considered "vulnerable" under all previous listings from 1982 when sufficient data had first become available. It is regulated internationally under Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) meaning commercial trade in specimens (including parts and derivatives) is prohibited. ### Threats The animal faces a variety of critical threats. Poaching has long been a problem. Statistics show between 1959 and 1969 Amazonian Brazil alone accounted for 1,000 to 3,000 pelts annually. The species was so thoroughly decimated, the number dropped to just 12 in 1971. The implementation of CITES in 1973 finally brought about significant hunting reductions, although demand did not disappear entirely: in the 1980s, pelt prices were as high as US$250 on the European market. The threat has been exacerbated by the otters' relative fearlessness and tendency to approach human beings. They are extremely easy to hunt, being active through the day and highly inquisitive. The animal's relatively late sexual maturity and complex social life makes hunting especially disastrous. More recently, habitat destruction and degradation have become the principal dangers, and a further reduction of 50% is expected in giant otter numbers within the 25 years after 2020 (about the span of three generations of giant otters). Typically, loggers first move into rainforest, clearing the vegetation along riverbanks. Farmers follow, creating depleted soil and disrupted habitats. As human activity expands, giant otter home ranges become increasingly isolated. Subadults leaving in search of new territory find it impossible to set up family groups. Specific threats from human industry include unsustainable mahogany logging in parts of the giant otter range, and concentrations of mercury in its diet of fish, a byproduct of gold mining. Other threats to the giant otter include conflict with fishermen, who often view the species as a nuisance (see below). Ecotourism also presents challenges: while it raises money and awareness for the animals, by its nature it also increases human effect on the species, both through associated development and direct disturbances in the field. A number of restrictions on land use and human intrusion are required to properly maintain wild populations. Schenck et al., who undertook extensive fieldwork in Peru in the 1990s, suggest specific "no-go" zones where the species is most frequently observed, offset by observation towers and platforms to allow viewing. Limits on the number of tourists at any one time, fishing prohibitions, and a minimum safe distance of 50 metres (164 ft) are proposed to offer further protection. ### Distribution and population The giant otter has lost as much as 80% of its South American range. While still present in a number of north-central countries, giant otter populations are under considerable stress. The IUCN lists Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela as current range countries. Given local extinctions, the species' range has become discontinuous. Total population numbers are difficult to estimate. Populations in Bolivia were once widespread but the country became a "black spot" on distribution maps after poaching between the 1940s and 1970s; a relatively healthy, but still small, population of 350 was estimated in the country in 2002. The species has likely been extirpated from southern Brazil, but in the west of the country, decreased hunting pressure in the critical Pantanal has led to very successful recolonization; an estimate suggests 1,000 or more animals in the region. As of 2020, the IUCN estimates that there may be 4,569 otters living in Brazil. A significant population lives in the wetlands of the central Araguaia River, and in particular within Cantão State Park, which, with its 843 oxbow lakes and extensive flooded forests and marshlands, is one of the best habitat patches for this species in Brazil. Suriname still has significant forest cover and an extensive system of protected areas, much of which protects the giant otter. Duplaix returned to the country in 2000 and found the giant otter still present on the Kaburi Creek, a "jewel" of biodiversity, although increased human presence and land use suggests, sooner or later, the species may not be able to find suitable habitat for campsites. In a report for World Wildlife Fund in 2002, Duplaix was emphatic about the importance of Suriname and the other Guianas: > The three Guianas remain the last stronghold of giant otters in South America, with pristine giant otter habitat on some rivers and good giant otter densities overall—still, but for how long? The survival of the giant otter populations in the Guianas is essential to the survival of this endangered species in South America. Other countries have taken a lead in designating protected areas in South America. In 2004, Peru created one of the largest conservation areas in the world, Alto Purús National Park, with an area similar in size to Belgium. The park harbors many endangered plants and animals, including the giant otter, and holds the world record for mammal diversity. Bolivia designated wetlands larger than the size of Switzerland as a freshwater protected area in 2001; these are also home to the giant otter. ## Interactions with indigenous peoples Throughout its range, the giant otter interacts with indigenous groups, who often practice traditional hunting and fishing. A study of five indigenous communities in Colombia suggests native attitudes toward the animal are a threat: the otters are often viewed as a nuisance that interferes with fishing, and are sometimes killed. Even when told of the importance of the species to ecosystems and the danger of extinction, interviewees showed little interest in continuing to coexist with the species. Schoolchildren, however, had a more positive impression of the animal. In Suriname, the giant otter is not a traditional prey species for human hunters, which affords some protection. (One researcher has suggested the giant otter is hunted only in desperation due to its horrible taste.) The animal sometimes drowns in nets set across rivers and machete attacks by fishermen have been noted, according to Duplaix, but "tolerance is the rule" in Suriname. One difference in behavior was seen in the country in 2002: the normally inquisitive giant otters showed "active avoidance behavior with visible panic" when boats appeared. Logging, hunting, and pup seizure may have led groups to be far more wary of human activity. Local people sometimes take pups for the exotic pet trade or as pets for themselves, but the animal rapidly grows to become unmanageable. Duplaix relates the story of an Arawak Indian who took two pups from their parents. While revealing of the affection held for the animals, the seizure was a profound blow to the breeding pair, which went on to lose their territory to competitors. The species has also appeared in the folklore of the region. It plays an important role in the mythology of the Achuar people, where giant otters are seen as a form of the tsunki, or water spirits: they are a sort of "water people" who feed on fish. They appear in a fish poisoning legend where they assist a man who has wasted his sexual energy, creating the anacondas of the world from his distressed and extended genitals. The Bororó people have a legend on the origin of tobacco smoking: those who used the leaf improperly by swallowing it were punished by being transformed into giant otters; the Bororo also associate the giant otter with fish and with fire. A Ticuna legend has it that the giant otter exchanged places with the jaguar: the story says jaguar formerly lived in the water and the giant otter came to the land only to eat. The indigenous Kichwa peoples from Amazonian Peru believed in a world of water where Yaku runa reigned as mother of the water and was charged with caring for fish and animals. Giant otters served as Yaku runa's canoes. A Maxacali creation story suggests that the practice of otter fishing may have been prevalent in the past.

Norman Cob

Breed of light draught horse from Normandy

The Norman Cob or Cob Normand is a breed of light draught horse that originated in the region of Normandy in northern France. It is of medium size, with a range of heights and weights, due to selective breeding for a wide range of uses. Its conformation is similar to a robust Thoroughbred, and it more closely resembles a Thoroughbred cross than other French draught breeds. The breed is known for its lively, long-striding trot. Common colours include chestnut, bay and seal brown. There are three general subsets within the breed: horses used under saddle, those used in harness, and those destined for meat production. It is popular for recreational and competitive driving, representing France internationally in the latter, and is also used for several riding disciplines. The Normandy region of France is well known for its horse breeding, having also produced the Percheron and French Trotter. Small horses called bidets were the original horses in the area, and these, crossed with other types, eventually produced the Carrossier Normand, the immediate ancestor of the Norman Cob. Although known as one of the best carriage horse breeds available in the early 20th century, the Carrossier Normand became extinct after the advent of the automobile, having been used to develop the French Trotter, Anglo-Norman and Norman Cob. In its homeland, the Norman Cob was used widely for agriculture, even more so than the internationally known Percheron, and in 1950, the first studbook was created for the breed. The advent of mechanisation threatened all French draught breeds, and while many draught breeders turned their production towards the meat market, Norman Cob breeders instead crossed their horses with Thoroughbreds to contribute to the fledgling Selle Français breed, now the national saddle horse of France. This allowed the Norman Cob to remain relatively the same through the decades, while other draught breeds were growing heavier and slower due to selection for meat. Between the 1970s and 1990s, the studbook went through several changes, and in the 1980s, genetic studies showed that the breed suffered from inbreeding and genetic drift. Breed enthusiasts worked to develop new selection criteria for breeding stock, and population numbers are now relatively stable. Today, Norman Cobs are mainly found in the departments of Manche, Calvados and Orne. ## Characteristics The Norman Cob is a mid-sized horse, standing between 160 and 165 centimetres (15.3 and 16.1 hands) and weighing 550 to 900 kilograms (1200 to 2000 lb). The large variations in height and weight are explained by selection for a variety of uses within the breed. The Norman Cob is elegant and closer in type to a Thoroughbred-cross than other French draught breeds. Its conformation is similar to a robust Thoroughbred, with a square overall profile and short back. Selective breeding has been used to develop a lively trot, with long strides. The head is well-proportioned and similar to that of the Selle Français, with wide nostrils, small ears and a straight or convex facial profile. The neck is thick, muscular and arched. The mane is sometimes hogged. The shoulders are broad and angled, the chest deep and the withers pronounced. The body is compact and stocky, with a short, strong back. The hindquarters are powerful, although not so much as in heavy draught breeds, and the croup muscular and sloping. The legs are short, muscular and strong, with thick bone, but less massive than most draught breeds. The feet are round, wide and solid. Colours accepted for registration include chestnut, bay and seal brown (the latter called black pangaré by the breed registry, although these horses are genetically brown, not black with pangaré markings). Bays with white markings are the most popular. The Norman Cob is a calm, willing horse with strong personality. Its Thoroughbred ancestry gives them energy and athleticism, and makes them mature faster than other draught breeds. They show great endurance when ridden, and are relatively hardy, accepting outdoor living and changes in climate. Traditionally the Norman Cob had its tail docked, a practice that continued until January 1996, when the practice became illegal in France. There are three general subsets within the breed: horses used under saddle, those used in harness, and those destined for meat production. Horses may be automatically registered if at least 87.5 per cent of their ancestors (seven out of eight) were registered Norman Cobs. Purebred stallions may not be bred more than 70 times per year. Foals produced through artificial insemination and embryo transfer may be registered, but cloned horses may not. In general, breeders look to produce horses with good gaits and an aptitude for driving, while keeping the conformation that makes the Norman Cob one of nine French draught breeds. ## History The Norman Cob comes from the Normandy region of France, an area known for its horse breeding. Normandy is also the home of two other breeds, the Percheron and the French Trotter. Both of these breeds are better-known than the Norman Cob, although the latter is popular in its home region. The name "cob" comes from the English and Welsh cobs that it resembles, with the addition of "Norman" to refer to the area in which it originated. Although generally considered a member of the draught horse group, the Norman Cob is special among French draught breeds. It has been used almost exclusively for the production of sport horses, and has not been extensively used for the production of meat, unlike many other French draught breeds. This means that its conformation has remained relatively unchanged, as opposed to being bred for heavier weights for butchering. The original horses in Normandy and Brittany were small horses called bidets, introduced by the Celts. The Romans crossed these horses with larger mares, and beginning in the 10th century, these "Norman horses" were desired throughout Europe. During the 16th century, Norman horses were known to be heavy and strong, able to pull long distances, and used to pull artillery and diligences. Barb and Arabian blood was added during the reign of Louis XIV. The Norman Cob is descended from this Norman horse, called the Carrossier Normand. It was also influenced by crossing with other breeds including the Mecklenburger, the Gelderland horse and Danish horses. By 1840, the Carrossier Normand had become more refined, due to crosses with imported British Norfolk Trotters, as well as gaining better gaits, energy, elegance, and conformation. The Haras National de Saint-Lô (National Stud of Saint-Lô) was founded in 1806 by Napoleon. This stud and the Haras du Pin (Stud of Pin) became the main production centres for the Carrossier Normand. The Norman horse-Thoroughbred crossbreds produced at these studs were divided into two groups. The first were lighter cavalry horses, and the second were heavier horses, called "cobs", used for draught work in the region. At this time, there was no breed registry or studbook; instead, selective breeding was practised by the two studs, and farmers tested the capabilities of young horses to select breeding stock. ### Early 20th century At the very beginning of the 20th century, the Carrossier Normand was considered the best carriage horses available. The arrival of automobiles, and corresponding decline in demand for carriage horses, coincided with a split in the breed. A distinction was made between the lighter, faster horses in the breed, used for sport, and larger horses, used for agricultural work. The lighter horses eventually became the French Trotter (for driving) and Anglo-Norman (for riding and cavalry), while the heavier horses became the Norman Cob. In 1912, when French horse populations were at their highest, there were 422 stallions at the Saint-Lô stud, mainly cobs and trotters. When the original Carrossier Normand became extinct in the 1920s, breeding focused on the two remaining types, with the Norman Cob continuing to be used for farming and the Anglo-Norman being used to create the Selle Français, the national French sport horse. In the regions of Saint-Lô and Cotentin, the Norman Cob was widespread in agricultural uses until 1950, and the population continued to increase in the first half of the 20th century, even through the occupation during World War II. Even the Percheron, which was internationally recognised as the Norman draught horse, was not as popular in the homeland of the Norman Cob breed. In 1945, Norman Cob stallions accounted for 40% of the conscripted horses, and in 1950 a studbook was created for the breed. Like all French draught breeds, the Norman Cob was threatened by the advent of mechanisation in farming. The only option left to many breeders was to redirect their production to the meat markets. However, the Norman Cob avoided this, through the efforts of Laurens St. Martin, the head of the Saint-Lô stud in 1944 and the developer of the Selle Français. He began crossing Thoroughbred stallions with Norman Cob mares to produce Selle Français horses, and the success of this program allowed a reorientation of the Cob breeding programs. Although population numbers continued to decline until 1995, the physical characteristics of the breed remained much the same, not growing heavier and slower as many of the French draught breeds did due to breeding for the production of meat. Even today, some Selle Français from Norman bloodlines are similar to the Norman Cob in appearance. ### 1950 to 2000 The modern Norman Cob is slightly heavier than it was in the early 20th century, due to lighter horses of the breed being absorbed into the Selle Français breed. In 1976, the National Stud at Saint-Lô had 186 stallions, including 60 Norman Cobs. In the same year, the breed registry was reorganised, and the Norman Cob placed in the draught horse category. The reorganisation of the breed registry helped to reinvigorate Norman Cob breeding, and to bring attention to the risk of extinction of the breed. In 1980, the Institut national de la recherche agronomique and Institut national agronomique performed demographic and genetic analysis of threatened breeds of horses within France. In 1982, researchers concluded that the Norman Cob has been inbred and suffered genetic drift from its original population. The increasing average age of Norman Cob breeders also made the situation of the breed precarious. Enthusiasts worked to reorient the breed towards driving and recreation pursuits, and since 1982 have again reorganised the breed association. In 1992, a new studbook was created for the breed, with new selection criteria designed to preserve the quality of the breed, particularly its gaits. The latest editions of the breed registry and studbook are controlled by the Syndicat national des éleveurs et utilisateurs de chevaux Cob normand (National Union of Farmers and Users of Normandy Cob Horses), based in Tessy-sur-Vire. The association works to preserve and promote the breed throughout France, focusing especially on Normandy, Vendée and Anjou. In 1994, Normandy contained 2000 Percheron and Norman Cob horses, and annually bred around 600 foals of these two breeds. This included approximately half of the Norman Cobs bred in France. ### 2000 to today Today, Norman Cobs are mainly found in the departments of Manche, Calvados and Orne, which form the area where the breed was originally developed. The region of Saint-Lô, which ranks first in the production of Norman Cobs, represents 35 per cent of new births. The Norman Cob is also present around the Haras de la Vendée (Stud at Vendée), which represents 25 per cent of births, the Haras du Pin and in central Massif. In 2004, there were just over 600 French breeders of the Norman Cob, and in 2005, 914 Norman Cob mares were bred, with 65 stallions recorded as active in France. In recent years, the number of Norman Cobs has remained relatively stable. In 2011, there were 319 Norman Cob births in France, and numbers of annual births between 1992 and 2010 ranged between 385 and 585. Members of the breed are shown annually at the Paris International Agricultural Show. There are fairs held for the breed at Lessay and Gavray, in Manche. The National Stud at Saint-Lô remains involved in the maintenance and development of the breed, and organises the annual national competition for the breed. The stud also organises events at which to present the breed to the public, including the Normandy Horse Show. The Norman Cob is beginning to be exported to other countries, especially Belgium. In that country, some are bred pure, while others are crossed on the Ardennes to improve its gaits. Approximately 15 horses are exported annually, travelling to Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy for leisure, logging and agricultural uses. ## Uses A multi-purpose breed, the Norman Cob was formerly used wherever there was a need. It was used in a variety of agricultural and other work by farmers, and was used by the army for pulling artillery. The postal service used it to pull mail carriages, which it was capable of doing at a fast trot over bad roads for long distances. Postal workers appreciated the breed for its willingness to remain calm, stationary and tethered for long periods of time. Due to the modernisation of agriculture and transport, it is now used very little in these areas. The breed is popular for recreational and competitive driving, to which it is well suited in temperament. In 1997, the rules of driving events in France were modified to take into account the speed of execution of the course, which made lighter, faster horses more competitive. The Norman Cob and the lighter type of Boulonnais were particularly affected. Its gaits, calm temperament and willingness to master technical movements make it an excellent competitor, and in 2011, more than a third of the horses represented in the French driving championships were Norman Cobs. Many Norman Cobs represent France in driving events at international level. The Norman Cob is also used for riding, and may be used for most equestrian disciplines. It is particularly well suited for vaulting. Elderly and nervous riders often appreciate its calm temperament. Lighter Cobs can be used for mounted hunts. Crosses between the Norman Cob and Thoroughbred continue to be made to create saddle horses, generally with 25 to 50 per cent Cob blood. Some Norman Cobs are bred for the meat market. The breed is sometimes preferred by butchers because of the lighter carcass weight and increased profitability over the Thoroughbred, while at the same time retaining meat similar in flavour and appearance to that of the Thoroughbred. ## See also - List of French horse breeds

Sholay

1975 film by Ramesh Sippy

Sholay (, ) is a 1975 Indian Hindi-language action-adventure film directed by Ramesh Sippy, produced by his father G. P. Sippy, and written by Salim–Javed. The film is about two criminals, Veeru (Dharmendra) and Jai (Amitabh Bachchan), hired by a retired police officer (Sanjeev Kumar) to capture the ruthless dacoit Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan). Hema Malini and Jaya Bhaduri also star, as Veeru and Jai's love interests, Basanti and Radha, respectively. The music was composed by R D Burman. The film was shot in the rocky terrain of Ramanagara, in the southern state of Karnataka, over a span of two and a half years. Shot was started in October 1973. After the Central Board of Film Certification mandated the removal of several violent scenes, Sholay was released as a 198-minute long film. In 1990, the original director's cut of 204 minutes became available on home media. When first released, Sholay received negative critical reviews and a tepid commercial response, but favourable word-of-mouth publicity helped it to become a box office success. It broke records for continuous showings in many theatres across India, and ran for more than five years at Mumbai's Minerva theatre. The film was also an overseas success in the Soviet Union. It was the highest-grossing Indian film ever at the time, and was the highest-grossing film in India up until Hum Aapke Hain Koun..\! (1994). By numerous accounts, Sholay remains one of the highest-grossing Indian films of all time, adjusted for inflation. Sholay is often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential Indian films of all time. It was ranked first in the British Film Institute's 2002 poll of "Top 10 Indian Films" of all time. In 2005, the judges of the 50th Filmfare Awards named it the Best Film of 50 Years. The film is a Dacoit Western (sometimes called a "Curry Western"), combining the conventions of Indian dacoit films with that of Spaghetti Westerns along with elements of Samurai cinema. Sholay is also a defining example of the masala film, which mixes several genres in one work. Scholars have noted several themes in the film, such as glorification of violence, conformation to feudal ethos, debate between social order and mobilised usurpers, homosocial bonding, and the film's role as a national allegory. The combined sales of the original soundtrack, scored by R. D. Burman, and the dialogues (released separately), set new sales records. The film's dialogues and certain characters became extremely popular, contributing to numerous cultural memes and becoming part of India's daily vernacular. In January 2014, Sholay was re-released to theatres in the 3D format. ## Plot Jai and Veeru are small-time crooks who are released from prison, where they are recruited by a former Inspector Thakur Baldev Singh to capture a notorious dacoit named Gabbar Singh wanted for ₹50,000, as the duo had saved Thakur from a train robbery which makes Thakur to recruit them for the mission with an additional ₹20,000 reward. The duo leave for Thakur's village in Ramgarh, where Gabbar is residing and terrorizing the villagers. After reaching Ramgarh, Veeru falls for Basanti, a feisty talkative horse-cart driver. Jai meets Thakur's widowed daughter-in-law Radha and falls for her, who later reciprocates his feelings. The two thwart Gabbar's dacoits, who came to extort money. During the festival of Holi, Gabbar's gang attacks the villagers where they corner Jai and Veeru, but the duo manage to attack and chase them away from the village. The duo are upset at Thakur's inaction (when Jai and Veeru were cornered, Thakur had a gun within his reach, but did not help them) and consider calling off the mission. Thakur reveals that a few years ago, Gabbar had killed his family members (except Radha and Ramlal), and had both his arms cut off; he concealed the dismemberment by always wearing a shawl, which was the sole reason he could not use the gun. Seeing how much Thakur has suffered, Jai and Veeru took pity by taking an oath that they will capture Gabbar alive, free of charge. After learning the duo's heroics, Gabbar kills the local imam Rahim Chacha's son Ahmed, all to threaten the villagers to make Jai and Veeru surrender to him. The villagers refuse and instead get the duo to kill a few of Gabbar's henchmen in revenge for the boy's death. Gabbar angrily retaliates by having his men capture Veeru and Basanti. Jai arrives and attacks the hideout, where the trio are able to flee Gabbar's hideout with dacoits in pursuit. Shooting from behind a rock, Jai and Veeru nearly run out of ammunition. Unaware that Jai was wounded in the gunfight, Veeru is forced to leave for more ammunition and also to drop Basanti at a safe place. Jai sacrifices himself by using his last bullet to ignite dynamite sticks on a bridge from close range, killing Gabbar's men. Veeru returns, and Jai dies, leaving Radha and Veeru devastated. Enraged, Veeru attacks Gabbar's den and kills his remaining men where he catches Gabbar and nearly beats him to death. Thakur appears and reminds Veeru of the vow to hand over Gabbar alive. Thakur uses his spike-soled shoes to severely injure Gabbar and his hands. The police arrive and arrest Gabbar for his crimes. After Jai's funeral, Veeru leaves Ramgarh and finds Basanti waiting for him on the train. ## Cast ## Production ### Development The screenwriter pair Salim–Javed, consisting of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, began narrating the idea for Sholay as a four-line snippet to filmmakers in 1973. The idea was rejected by two producer/director teams, including directors Manmohan Desai and Prakash Mehra. About six months after the release of Zanjeer (1973), Salim-Javed contacted G. P. Sippy and his son Ramesh Sippy, and narrated the four-line snippet to them. Ramesh Sippy liked the concept of Sholay and hired them to develop it. The original idea of the film involved an army officer who decided to hire two ex-soldiers to avenge the murder of his family. The army officer was later changed to a policeman because Sippy felt that it would be difficult to get permission to shoot scenes depicting army activities. Salim-Javed completed the script in one month, incorporating names and personality traits of their friends and acquaintances. The film's script and dialogues are in Hindustani; Salim-Javed wrote the dialogues in Urdu script, which was then transcribed by an assistant into Devanagari script so that Hindi readers could read the Urdu dialogues. The film's plot was loosely styled after Akira Kurosawa's 1954 samurai cinema film, Seven Samurai. Sholay is a defining example of the Dacoit Western film, combining the conventions of Indian dacoit films, especially Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957) and the Dilip Kumar and Nitin Bose film Gunga Jumna (1961), with that of Westerns, especially Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns such as Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) as well as The Magnificent Seven (1960). It also has some plot elements borrowed from the Indian films Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971) and Khote Sikkay (1973). A scene depicting an attempted train robbery was inspired by a similar scene in Gunga Jumna, and has also been compared to a similar scene in North West Frontier (1959). A scene showing the massacre of Thakur's family has been compared with the massacre of the McBain family in Once Upon a Time in the West. Sholay may have also been influenced by Sam Peckinpah's Westerns, such as The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), and George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). The character Gabbar Singh was modelled on a real-life dacoit Gabbar Singh Gujjar who had menaced the villages around Gwalior in the 1950s. Any policeman captured by Gujjar had his ears and nose cut off, and was released as a warning to other policemen. The fictional Gabbar was also influenced by larger-than-life characters in Pakistani author Ibn-e-Safi's Urdu novels, Dilip Kumar's dacoit character Gunga from the film Gunga Jumna who speaks with a similar mixed Khariboli and Awadhi dialect, and villains from Sergio Leone's films. Sippy wanted to do away with the clichéd idea of a man becoming a dacoit due to societal issues, as was the case in other films, and focused on Gabbar being an emblem of pure evil. To emphasise the point of Gabbar being a new type of villain, Sippy avoided the typical tropes of dacoits wearing dhotis and pagris and sporting a tika and worshipping "Ma Bhavani"; Gabbar would be wearing army fatigues. The character of the jailer, played by Asrani was influenced by Adolf Hitler. Javed Akhtar brought a book on World War II which had several pictures of Hitler posing to set the typical posture of the character in the film. Asrani spiced up his character with some ideas about Hitler's speech delivery he had heard from a teacher in FTII. The trademark 'Ha Ha' at the end of his monologues was inspired by a similar performance by Jack Lemmon in The Great Race. Soorma Bhopali, a minor comic relief character, was based on an acquaintance of actor Jagdeep, a forest officer from Bhopal named Soorma. The real-life Soorma eventually threatened to press charges when people who had viewed the film began referring to him as a woodcutter. The main characters' names, Jai and Veeru, mean "victory" and "heroism" in Hindi. ### Casting The producers considered Danny Denzongpa for the role of Gabbar Singh, but he could not accept it as he was committed to act in Feroz Khan's Dharmatma (1975), under production at the same time. Amjad Khan, who was the second choice, prepared himself for the part by reading the book Abhishapta Chambal, which told of the exploits of Chambal dacoits. The book was written by Taroon Kumar Bhaduri, the father of fellow cast member Jaya Bhaduri. Sanjeev Kumar also wanted to play the role of Gabbar Singh, but Salim-Javed "felt he had the audience's sympathy through roles he'd done before; Gabbar had to be completely hateful." Sippy wanted Shatrughan Sinha to play the part of Jai, but there were already several big stars signed, and Amitabh Bachchan, who was not very popular yet, lobbied hard to get the part for himself. He was cast after Salim-Javed recommended him for Sholay in 1973; Bachchan's performance in their first collaboration, Zanjeer, convinced Salim-Javed he was the right actor for the part. Salim-Javed were also impressed with Bachchan's performance in Raaste Kaa Patthar (1972), and at Bachchan's request, Dharmendra had personally put in a word for him. All these factors ensured that the role was Bachchan's. As cast members had read the script ahead of time, many were interested in playing different parts. Pran was considered for the role of Thakur Baldev Singh, but Sippy thought Sanjeev Kumar was a better choice. Initially, Salim-Javed approached Dilip Kumar to play Thakur's role, but he turned down the offer; Dilip Kumar later said it was one of the few films he regretted turning down. Initially, Dharmendra was also interested to play the role of Thakur. He eventually gave up the role when Sippy informed him that Sanjeev Kumar would play Veeru if that happened, and would thus be paired with Hema Malini, who Dharmendra was trying to woo. Dharmendra knew that Kumar was also interested in Malini. Malini was reluctant to play the role of a tangewali, more so after Sippy told her that the film belongs to Sanjeev Kumar and Amjad Khan, but she trusted Sippy to give her a meaty role, given that he had played a huge role in essaying her stardom through their previous collaborations. During the film's production, four of the leads became romantically involved. Bachchan married Bhaduri four months before filming started. This led to shooting delays when Bhaduri became pregnant with their daughter Shweta. By the time the film released, she was pregnant with their son Abhishek. Dharmendra had begun courting Malini during their earlier film Seeta Aur Geeta (1972), also directed by Sippy, and used the location shoot of Sholay to further pursue her. During their romantic scenes, Dharmendra would often pay the light boys to spoil the shot, thereby ensuring many retakes which would allow him to spend more time with her. The couple married five years after the film's release. ### Filming Much of Sholay was shot in the rocky terrain of Ramanagara, a town near Bangalore, Karnataka. The filmmakers had to build a road from the Bangalore highway to Ramanagara for convenient access to the sets. Art director Ram Yedekar had an entire township built on the site. A prison set was constructed near Rajkamal Studios in Bombay, also outdoors, to match the natural lighting of the on-location sets. One part of Ramanagara was for a time called "Sippy Nagar" as a tribute to the director of the film. As of 2010, a visit to the "Sholay rocks" (where much of the film was shot) was still being offered to tourists travelling through Ramanagara. Filming began on location on 3 October 1973, with a scene featuring Bachchan and Bhaduri. The film had a lavish production for its time (with frequent banquets and parties for the cast), took two and a half years to make, and went over budget. One reason for its high cost was that Sippy re-filmed scenes many times to get his desired effect. "Yeh Dosti", a 5-minute song sequence, took 21 days to shoot, two short scenes in which Radha lights lamps took 20 days to film because of lighting problems, and the shooting of the scene in which Gabbar kills the imam's son lasted 19 days. The train robbery sequence, shot on the Bombay–Poona railway route near Panvel, took more than 7 weeks to complete. Sholay was the first Indian film to have a stereophonic soundtrack and to use the 70 mm widescreen format. However, since actual 70 mm cameras were expensive at the time, the film was shot on traditional 35 mm film and the 4:3 picture was subsequently converted to a 2.2:1 frame. Regarding the process, Sippy said, "A 70 mm [sic] format takes the awe of the big screen and magnifies it even more to make the picture even bigger, but since I also wanted a spread of sound we used six-track stereophonic sound and combined it with the big screen. It was definitely a differentiator." The use of 70 mm was emphasised by film posters on which the name of the film was stylised to match the CinemaScope logo. Film posters also sought to differentiate the film from those which had come before; one of them added the tagline: "The greatest star cast ever assembled – the greatest story ever told". ### Alternate version The director's cut of Sholay has a different ending in which Thakur kicks Gabbar onto a nail on one of the two poles that Gabbar had used to chain Thakur when he had cut off his arms, stabbing him in the back and killing him, along with some additional violent scenes. Thakur's shoe soles getting armed with spikes, Gabbar's death scene, and the scene in which the imam's son is killed, were cut from the film by India's Censor Board, as was the scene in which Thakur's family is massacred. The Censor Board was concerned about the violence, and that viewers may be influenced to violate the law by punishing people severely. Although Sippy fought to keep the scenes, eventually he had to re-shoot the ending of the film, and as directed by the Censor Board, have the police arrive just before Thakur can kill Gabbar. The censored theatrical version was the only one seen by audiences for fifteen years. The original, unedited cut of the film finally came out in a British release on VHS in 1990. Since then, Eros International has released two versions on DVD. The director's cut of the film preserves the original full frame and is 204 minutes in length; the censored widescreen version is 198 minutes long. ## Themes and interpretations Scholars have noted several themes in the film, such as glorification of violence, conformation to feudal ethos, debate between social order and mobilised usurpers, homosocial bonding, and the film's role as a national allegory.[1] Koushik Banerjea, a sociologist in the London School of Economics, notes that Sholay exhibits a "sympathetic construction of 'rogue' masculinity" exemplified by the likeable outlaws Jai and Veeru. Banerjea argues during the film, the moral boundary between legality and criminality gradually erodes. Film scholar Wimal Dissanayake agrees that the film brought "a new stage in the evolving dialectic between violence and social order" to Indian cinema. Film scholar M. Madhava Prasad states that Jai and Veeru represent a marginalised population that is introduced into conventional society. Prasad says that, through the elements of revenge included in the plot and the application of Jai and Veeru's criminality for the greater good, the narrative reflects reactionary politics, and the audience is compelled to accept feudal order. Banerjea explains that though Jai and Veeru are mercenaries, they are humanised by their emotional needs. Such dualism makes them vulnerable, in contrast to the pure evil of Gabbar Singh. Gabbar Singh, the film's antagonist, was well received by the audience, despite his pervasive sadistic cruelty. Dissanayake explains that the audience was fascinated by the dialogues and mannerisms of the character, and this element of spectacle outweighed his actions, a first for Indian melodrama. He notes that the picturisation of violence in the film was glamourised and uninhibited. He further notes that, unlike earlier melodramas in which the female body occupies the audience's attention as an object of male fetish, in Sholay, the male body becomes the centrepiece. It becomes the battleground where good and evil compete for supremacy. Dissanayake argues that Sholay can be viewed as a national allegory: it lacks a comforting logical narrative, it shows social stability being repeatedly challenged, and it shows the devaluation of human life resulting from a lack of emotions. Taken together, these elements comprise the allegorical representation of India. The narrative style of Sholay, with its violence, revenge, and vigilante action, is occasionally compared by scholars to the political unrest in India at the time of its release. This tension culminated in the Emergency (rule by decree) declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975. Dissanayeke and Sahai note that, although the film borrowed heavily from the Hollywood Western genre, particularly in its visuals, it was successfully "Indianised". As an example, William van der Heide has compared a massacre scene in Sholay with a similar scene in Once Upon a Time in the West. Although both films were similar in technical style, Sholay emphasised Indian family values and melodramatic tradition, while the Western was more materialistic and restrained in its approach. Maithili Rao, in Encyclopedia of Hindi Cinema, notes that Sholay infuses the style of the Western genre into a "feudalistic ethos". Ted Shen of the Chicago Reader notes Sholay's "hysterical visual style" and intermittent "populist message". Cultural critic and Islamic scholar Ziauddin Sardar lampoons the film in his book The Secret Politics of Our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema, both for its caricature and stereotyping of Muslim and women characters, and for what he calls mockery of innocent villagers. Sardar notes that the two most prominent Muslim characters in the film are Soorma Bhopali (a buffoonish criminal), and an impotent victim of the bandits (the imam). Meanwhile, the sole function of one female character (Radha) is to suffer her fate in silence, while the other female lead (Basanti) is just a garrulous village belle. Some scholars have indicated that Sholay contains homosocial themes. Ted Shen describes the male bonding shown in the film as bordering on camp style. Dina Holtzman, in her book Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora, states that the death of Jai, and resultant break of bonding between the two male leads, is necessary for the sake of establishing a normative heterosexual relationship (that of Veeru and Basanti). ## Music R. D. Burman composed the film's music, and the lyrics were written by Anand Bakshi. The songs used in the film, and released on the original soundtrack are listed below. Following that is a list of unused tracks and dialogues which were released later on an updated soundtrack. Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar and Manna Dey performed vocals for Dharmendra, Malini and Bachchan, respectively. The song "Mehbooba Mehbooba" was sung by its composer, R. D. Burman, who received his sole Filmfare Award nomination for playback singing for his effort. The song, which is often featured on Bollywood hit song compilations, is based on "Say You Love Me" by Greek singer Demis Roussos. "Mehbooba Mehbooba" has been extensively anthologised, remixed, and recreated. A version was created in 2005 by the Kronos Quartet for their Grammy-nominated album You've Stolen My Heart, featuring Asha Bhosle. It was also remixed and sung by Himesh Reshammiya, along with Bhosle, in his debut acting film Aap Kaa Surroor (2007). "Yeh Dosti" has been called the ultimate friendship anthem. It was remixed and sung by Shankar Mahadevan and Udit Narayan for the 2010 Malayalam film Four Friends, and also in 2010 it was used to symbolise India's friendship with the United States during a visit from President Barack Obama. Several songs from the soundtrack were included in the annual Binaca Geetmala list of top filmi songs. "Mehbooba Mehooba" was listed at No. 24 on the 1975 list, and at No. 6 on the 1976 list. "Koi Haseena" was listed at No. 30 in 1975, and No. 20 in 1976. "Yeh Dosti" was listed at No. 9 in 1976. Despite the soundtrack's success, at the time, the songs from Sholay attracted less attention than the film's dialogue—a rarity for Hindi language films. The producers were thus prompted to release records with only dialogue. Taken together, the album sales reached an unprecedented 500,000 units. By 1979, the soundtrack went Platinum (equivalent to 1 million sales at the time), becoming one of the top-selling Bollywood soundtracks of the 1970s. Music critic Oli Marlow reviewed the soundtrack in 2013, calling it a unique fusion of religious, folk, and classical music, with influences from around the world. He also commented on the sound design of the film, calling it psychedelic, and saying that there was "a lot of incredible incidental music" in the film that was not included in the soundtrack releases. In a 1999 paper submitted to London's Symposium on Sound in Cinema, film critic Shoma A. Chatterji said, "Sholay offers a model lesson on how sound can be used to signify the terror a character evokes. Sholay is also exemplary in its use of soundmatching to jump cut to a different scene and time, without breaking the continuity of the narrative, yet, intensifying the drama." ## Reception ### Box office Sholay was released on 15 August 1975, Indian Independence Day, in Bombay. Due to lackluster reviews and a lack of effective visual marketing tools, it saw poor financial returns in its first two weeks. From the third week, however, viewership picked up owing to positive word of mouth. During the initial slow period, the director and writer considered re-shooting some scenes so that Amitabh Bachchan's character would not die. When business picked up, they abandoned this idea. After being helped additionally by a soundtrack release containing dialogue snippets, Sholay soon became an "overnight sensation". The film was then released in other distribution zones such as Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, and Hyderabad on 11 October 1975. It became the highest-grossing Hindi language film of 1975, and film ranking website Box Office India has given the film a verdict of All Time Blockbuster. Sholay went on to earn a still-standing record of 60 golden jubilees across India, and was the first film in India to celebrate a silver jubilee at over 100 theatres. It was shown continuously at Bombay's Minerva theatre for over five years. Sholay was the Indian film with the longest theatrical run until Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) broke its record of 286 weeks in 2001. Exact figures are not available on the budget and box-office earnings of Sholay, but film trade sources provide estimates of its success. According to Box Office India, Sholay earned about ₹150 million in net income (valued at about US$16,778,000 in 1975) in India during its first run, which was many times its ₹30 million (valued at about US$3,355,000 in 1975) budget. Those earnings in India were a record that remained unbroken for nineteen years, which is also the longest amount of time that a film has held the record for being the highest grossing film in India. Its original gross was increased further with re-releases during the late 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. The film's total gross revenue in India amounted to ₹350 million ($39.15 million). Box Office India estimates the film's total footfalls in India as over 100 million tickets sold. The film was also an overseas success in the Soviet Union, where it was released in 1979. The film sold 48.4 million tickets during its initial run at the Soviet box office, before eventually selling 60 million tickets including re-runs. The film was also released in China, as two parts in 1988. It was the highest-grossing Indian film ever up until Disco Dancer (1982), and the highest-grossing film in India up until Hum Aapke Hain Koun..\! (1994). In 1985, India Today estimated that the film drew a total audience of 250 million over the years, which is comparable to the number of tickets sold by some of the world's highest-grossing films of all time adjusted for inflation. It is often cited that, after adjusting the figures for inflation, Sholay remains one of the highest-grossing films in the history of Indian cinema, although such figures are not known with certainty. Box Office India estimated ₹1.63 billion as Sholay's adjusted domestic net income in 2008, while Times of India estimated over ₹3 billion as the adjusted domestic gross in 2009. Mid-Day estimated the film's total adjusted gross as ₹15 billion ($million) in 2014. ### Critical response Initial critical reviews of Sholay were negative. Among contemporary critics, K.L. Amladi of India Today called the film a "dead ember" and "a gravely flawed attempt". Filmfare said that the film was an unsuccessful mincing of Western style with Indian milieu, making it an "imitation western—neither here nor there." Others labelled it as "sound and fury signifying nothing" and a "second-rate take-off" of the 1971 film Mera Gaon Mera Desh. Trade journals and columnists initially called the film a flop. In a 1976 article in the journal Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, author Michael Gallagher praised the technical achievement of the film, but otherwise criticised it stating, "As a spectacle it breaks new ground, but on every other level it is intolerable: formless, incoherent, superficial in human image, and a somewhat nasty piece of violence". Over time, the critical reception to Sholay greatly improved; it is now considered a classic, and among the greatest Hindi-language films. In a 2005 BBC review, the well-rounded characters and simple narrative of the film were commended, but the comical cameos of Asrani and Jagdeep were considered unnecessary. On the film's 35th anniversary, the Hindustan Times wrote that it was a "trailblazer in terms of camera work as well as music," and that "practically every scene, dialogue or even a small character was a highlight." In 2006, The Film Society of Lincoln Center described Sholay as "an extraordinary and utterly seamless blend of adventure, comedy, music and dance", labelling it an "indisputable classic". Chicago Review critic Ted Shen criticised the film in 2002 for its formulaic plot and "slapdash" cinematography, and noted that the film "alternates between slapstick and melodrama". In their obituary of the producer G.P. Sippy, The New York Times said that Sholay "revolutionized Hindi filmmaking and brought true professionalism to Indian script writing". ### Awards Sholay was nominated for nine Filmfare Awards, and the only winner was M. S. Shinde, who won the award for Best Editing. The film also won three awards at the 1976 Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards (Hindi section): "Best Actor in Supporting Role" for Amjad Khan, "Best Cinematographer (Colour)" for Dwarka Divecha, and "Best Art Director" for Ram Yedekar. Sholay received a special award at the 50th Filmfare Awards in 2005: Best Film of 50 Years. ## Legacy and cultural influence Sholay has received many "Best Film" honours. It was declared the "Film of the Millennium" by BBC India in 1999. It topped the British Film Institute's "Top 10 Indian Films" of all time poll of 2002, and was voted the greatest Indian movie in a Sky Digital poll of one million British Indians in 2004. It was also included in the magazine Time's "Best of Bollywood" list in 2010, and in IBN Live's list of the "100 greatest Indian films of all time" in 2013. In 2023, Time Out ranked it \#1 on its list of the "100 Best Bollywood Movies." Sholay inspired many films and pastiches, and spawned a genre of films, the "Curry Western", which is a play on the term Spaghetti Western. A more accurate label for the genre is the Dacoit Western, due to its roots in earlier Indian dacoit films such as Mother India (1957) and Gunga Jumna (1961). It was also an early and most definitive masala film, and a trend-setter for "multi-star" films. The film was a watershed for scriptwriters in Hindi language films, who were not paid well before Sholay; after the film's success, its writing duo Salim-Javed became stars in their own right and script writing became a more respected profession. The BBC has described Sholay as the "Star Wars of Bollywood", comparing its impact on Hindi language films to the impact that Star Wars (1977) later had on Hollywood, while comparing Gabbar Singh to Darth Vader. Certain scenes and dialogues from the film earned iconic status in India, such as "Kitne aadmi the" (How many men were there?), "Jo dar gaya, samjho mar gaya" (One who is scared is dead), and "Bahut yaarana laagta hai" (Looks like you two are very close) – all dialogues of Gabbar Singh. These and other popular dialogues entered the people's daily vernacular. Characters and dialogues from the film continue to be referred to and parodied in popular culture. Gabbar Singh, the sadistic villain, ushered in an era in Hindi films characterised by "seemingly omnipotent oppressors as villains", who play the pivotal role in setting up the context of the story, such as Shakal (played by Kulbhushan Kharbanda) of Shaan (1980), Mogambo (Amrish Puri) of Mr. India (1987) and Bhujang (Amrish Puri) of Tridev (1989). Filmfare, in 2013, named Gabbar Singh the most iconic villain in the history of Indian cinema, and four actors were included in its 2010 list of "80 Iconic Performances" for their work in this film. The film is often credited with making Amitabh Bachchan a "superstar", two years after he became a star with Zanjeer (1973). Some of the supporting actors remained etched in public memory as the characters they played in Sholay; for example, Mac Mohan continued to be referred to as "Sambha", even though his character had just one line. Major and minor characters continue to be used in commercials, promos, films and sitcoms. Amjad Khan acted in many villainous roles later in his career. He also played Gabbar Singh again in the 1991 spoof Ramgarh Ke Sholay, and reprised the role in commercials. The British Film Institute in 2002 wrote that fear of Gabbar Singh "is still invoked by mothers to put their children to sleep". The 2012 film Gabbar Singh, named after the character, became the highest-grossing Telugu film up to that point. Comedian Jagdeep, who played Soorma Bhopali in the film, attempted to use his Sholay success to create a spinoff. He directed and played the lead role in the 1988 film Soorma Bhopali, in which Dharmendra and Bachchan had cameos. Sholay was remade in Bangladesh as Dost Dushman (1977), becoming the first Dhallywood film to portray a number of lengthy action scenes, was condemned by many film critics for 'bringing violence' to the cinema screen in the country. In 2004, Sholay was digitally remastered and shown again to packed theatres in India, including Mumbai's Minerva, where it had run successfully 29 years earlier. Another attempt to remake Sholay, Ram Gopal Varma's film Aag (2007), starring Amitabh Bachchan as the villain, was a commercial and critical disaster. Because of television and home media, Sholay is widely available and still popular. Twenty years after its release, Sholay was first shown on the Indian DD National television channel, where it drew the highest ratings ever for an Indian film broadcast. Video game producer Mobile2win released the Sholay Ramgarh Express game for mobile phones in 2004, along with other Sholay themed content such as wallpapers, video clips, and ringtones; another video game Sholay: Bullets of Justice developed by Gameshastra has also been released. Sholay Adventures, a 2014 Indian animated television film adaptation of Sholay aired on Pogo TV. In 2019, a film titled The Sholay Girl, based on the stunt woman Reshma Pathan, was released. Pathan had worked as the body double for Malini in the film. Sholay has been the subject of two books and many articles. Wimal Dissanayake and Malti Sahai's Sholay, A Cultural Reading (1992) attempts a comprehensive scholarly study that sets the film within the broader history of popular cinema in India. Anupama Chopra's Sholay: The Making of a Classic (2000) provides an inside look at the film's production based on interviews with the director, stars, and crew members. Sholay has been labelled by Chopra as the gold standard in Indian cinema, and a reference point for audiences and trade analysts. Over the years, the film has reached a mythic stature in popular culture, and has been called the greatest Hindi film of all time. It belongs to only a small collection of films, including Kismet (1943), Mother India (1957), Mughal-e-Azam (1960) and Hum Aapke Hain Koun..\! (1994), which are repeatedly watched throughout India, and are viewed as definitive Hindi films with cultural significance. The lasting effect of Sholay on Indian cinema was summarised by Anupama Chopra, when in 2004 she called it "no longer just a film, [but] an event". In the 2000 book Sholay: The Making of a Classic, the noted director Shekhar Kapur stated "there has never been a more defining film on the Indian screen. Indian film history can be divided into Sholay BC and Sholay AD". The film was jointly released in Pakistan by Geo films and Mandviwalla Entertainment on 17 April 2015, almost 40 years after its theatrical release. The film's premiere in the country was held in Karachi. Screenwriter V. Vijayendra Prasad, responsible for a number of blockbusters in the early 21st century, including the South Indian franchise Baahubali and the Hindi film Bajrangi Bhaijaan (starring Salim's son Salman Khan), cited Sholay as a major inspiration on his work. ## 3D re-release Filmmaker Ketan Mehta's company Maya Digital was responsible for converting Sholay into the 3D format. Mehta was approached by G. P. Sippy's grandson, Sasha Sippy, about the project in 2010. In March 2012, Shaan Uttam Singh, the grandson of producer G. P. Sippy, said that he would sponsor a conversion of the film to 3D, and release it in late 2012; this was later postponed to late 2013, and eventually finalised for 3 January 2014. It took ₹250 million (US$3.0 million) to convert Sholay'' to 3D. Under the leadership of computer animator Frank Foster, 350 people worked to convert the film into the digital 3D format, for which every scene had to be individually restored, colour-corrected and re-composited in 3D to match the depth. New set-pieces, particularly those suited to the new format were also included, such as digital logs which scatter in the direction of the camera during the first half of the film when the train collides with them, the gunshot scene which frees Jai and Veeru from their handcuffs, and panoramic views of Gabbar's hideout in the caves. The theatrical trailer and release date were unveiled by the original script-writers Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar. The two original leads, Bachchan and Dharmendra, were also involved in promoting the re-release. The film was released in 1,000 screens in India, and additional screens overseas. It earned approximately ₹100 million (US$1.2 million) during its re-release, not enough to recover its conversion cost. ## See also - List of highest-grossing Indian films - Gabbar Singh (disambiguation) - Remakes of films by Akira Kurosawa 1. For glorification of violence, see Wimal Dissanayake, Malti Sahai, Sholay: A Cultural Reading (Delhi: Wiley Eastern, 1992), 115-19. ; for feudal ethos, see Hrishikesh Ingle, "Regionalist Disjuncture in Bollywood", in Vikrant Kishore et al., eds., Salaam Bollywood: Representations and interpretations (London: Routledge, 2016), 202. ; on social order/disorder, see Dissanayake, "The Concepts of Evil and Social Order in Indian Melodrama: An Evolving Dialect", in Melodrama and Asian Cinema, ed. Dissanayake (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993); on homosocial bonding, Dinah Holtzman, "Between Yaars: The Queering of Dost in Contemporary Bollywood Films", in Rini Bhattacharya et al., eds., Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora (London: Anthem Press, 2011), 118-22. ; as national allegory, John Hutnyk, Global South Asia on Screen (NY: Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2018), 206. .

James Madison

Founding Father, 4th U.S. president (1809 to 1817)

James Madison (March 16, 1751 – June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison was popularly acclaimed the "Father of the Constitution" for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. Madison was born into a prominent slave-owning planter family in Virginia. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates and the Continental Congress during and after the American Revolutionary War. Dissatisfied with the weak national government established by the Articles of Confederation, he helped organize the Constitutional Convention, which produced a new constitution designed to strengthen republican government against democratic assembly. Madison's Virginia Plan was the basis for the convention's deliberations. He became one of the leaders in the movement to ratify the Constitution and joined Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in writing The Federalist Papers, a series of pro-ratification essays that remains prominent among works of political science in American history. Madison emerged as an important leader in the House of Representatives and was a close adviser to President George Washington. During the early 1790s, Madison opposed the economic program and the accompanying centralization of power favored by Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton. Alongside Thomas Jefferson, he organized the Democratic–Republican Party in opposition to Hamilton's Federalist Party. Madison served as Jefferson's Secretary of State from 1801 to 1809, during which time Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase. Madison was elected president in 1808. Motivated by desire to acquire land held by Britain, Spain, and Native Americans, and after diplomatic protests with a trade embargo failed to end British seizures of American shipped goods, Madison led the United States into the War of 1812. Although the war ended inconclusively, many Americans viewed it as a successful "second war of independence" against Britain. Madison was re-elected in 1812. The war convinced Madison of the necessity of a stronger federal government. He presided over the creation of the Second Bank of the United States and the enactment of the protective Tariff of 1816. By treaty or through war, Native American tribes ceded 26,000,000 acres (11,000,000 ha) of land to the United States under Madison's presidency. Retiring from public office at the end of his presidency in 1817, Madison returned to his plantation, Montpelier, and died there in 1836. Madison was a slave owner; he freed one slave in 1783 to prevent a slave rebellion at Montpelier, but did not free any in his will. Among historians, Madison is considered one of the most important Founding Fathers of the United States. Leading historians have generally ranked him as an above-average president, although they are critical of his endorsement of slavery and his leadership during the War of 1812. Madison's name is commemorated in many landmarks across the nation, with prominent examples including Madison Square Garden, James Madison University, the James Madison Memorial Building, and the USS James Madison. ## Early life and education James Madison Jr. was born on March 16, 1751 (March 5, 1750, Old Style), at Belle Grove Plantation near Port Conway in the Colony of Virginia, to James Madison Sr. and Eleanor Madison. His family had lived in Virginia since the mid-17th century. Madison's maternal grandfather, Francis Conway, was a prominent planter and tobacco merchant. His father was a tobacco planter who grew up on a plantation, then called Mount Pleasant, which he inherited upon reaching adulthood. With an estimated 100 slaves and a 5,000-acre (2,000 ha) plantation, Madison's father was among the largest landowners in Virginia's Piedmont. In the early 1760s, the Madison family moved into a newly built house that they named Montpelier. Madison was the oldest of twelve children, with seven brothers and four sisters, though only six lived to adulthood: brothers Francis, Ambrose, and William, and sisters Nelly, Sarah, and Frances. Ambrose helped to manage Montpelier for his father and older brother until his own death in 1793. From age 11 to 16, Madison studied under Donald Robertson, a tutor for several prominent Southern families. Madison learned mathematics, geography, and modern and classical languages, becoming exceptionally proficient in Latin. At age 16, Madison returned to Montpelier, where he studied under the Reverend Thomas Martin to prepare for college. Unlike most college-bound Virginians of his day, Madison did not attend the College of William and Mary, as the lowland Williamsburg climate—thought to be more likely to harbor infectious disease—might have impacted his health. Instead, in 1769, he enrolled at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). His college studies included Latin, Greek, theology, and the works of the Enlightenment, and emphasized speech and debate. Madison was a leading member of the American Whig–Cliosophic Society, which competed on campus with a political counterpart, the Cliosophic Society. During his time at Princeton, Madison's closest friend was future Attorney General William Bradford. Along with classmate Aaron Burr, Madison completed the college's three-year Bachelor of Arts degree in two years, graduating in 1771. Madison had contemplated either entering the clergy or practicing law after graduation but instead remained at Princeton to study Hebrew and political philosophy under the college's president, John Witherspoon. He returned home to Montpelier in early 1772. Madison's ideas on philosophy and morality were strongly shaped by Witherspoon, who converted him to the philosophy, values, and modes of thinking of the Age of Enlightenment. Biographer Terence Ball wrote that at Princeton, Madison > was immersed in the liberalism of the Enlightenment, and converted to eighteenth-century political radicalism. From then on James Madison's theories would advance the rights of happiness of man, and his most active efforts would serve devotedly the cause of civil and political liberty. After returning to Montpelier, without a chosen career, Madison tutored his younger siblings. He began to study law books in 1773, asking his friend Bradford, a law apprentice, to send him a plan of study. Madison had acquired an understanding of legal publications by 1783. He saw himself as a law student but not a lawyer. Madison did not apprentice himself to a lawyer and never joined the bar. Following the Revolutionary War, he spent time at Montpelier studying ancient democracies in preparation for the Constitutional Convention. Madison suffered from episodes of mental exhaustion and illness with associated nervousness, which often caused short-term incapacity after periods of stress. However, he enjoyed good physical health until his final years. ## American Revolution and Articles of Confederation In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which caused strong opposition by the colonists and began a conflict that would culminate in the American Revolution. The American Revolutionary War broke out on April 19, 1775. The colonists formed three prominent factions: Loyalists, who continued to back King George III of the United Kingdom; a significant neutral faction without firm commitments to either Loyalists or Patriots; and the Patriots, whom Madison joined, under the leadership of the Continental Congress. Madison believed that Parliament had overstepped its bounds by attempting to tax the American colonies, and he sympathized with those who resisted British rule. Historically, debate about the consecration of bishops was ongoing and eventual legislation was passed in the British Parliament (subsequently called the Consecration of Bishops Abroad Act 1786) to allow bishops to be consecrated for an American church outside of allegiance to the British Crown. The new Anglican churches began incorporating more active forms of polity in their own self-government, collective decision-making, and self-supported financing; these measures would be consistent with separation of religious and secular identities. Madison believed these measures to be insufficient, and favored disestablishing the Anglican Church in Virginia; Madison believed that tolerance of an established religion was detrimental not only to freedom of religion but also because it encouraged excessive deference to any authority which might be asserted by an established church. After returning to Montpelier in 1774, Madison took a seat on the local Committee of Safety, a pro-revolution group that oversaw the local Patriot militia. In October 1775, he was commissioned as the colonel of the Orange County militia, serving as his father's second-in-command until he was elected as a delegate to the Fifth Virginia Convention, which was charged with producing Virginia's first constitution. Although Madison never battled in the Revolutionary War, he rose to prominence in Virginia politics as a wartime leader. At the Virginia constitutional convention, he convinced delegates to alter the Virginia Declaration of Rights originally drafted on May 20, 1776, to provide for "equal entitlement", rather than mere "tolerance", in the exercise of religion. With the enactment of the Virginia constitution, Madison became part of the Virginia House of Delegates, and he was subsequently elected to the Virginia governor's Council of State, where he became a close ally of Governor Thomas Jefferson. On July 4, 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence was formally printed. Madison participated in the debates concerning the Articles of Confederation in November 1777, contributing to the discussion of religious freedom affecting the drafting of the Articles, though his signature was not required for adopting the Articles of Confederation. Madison had proposed liberalizing the article on religious freedom, but the larger Virginia Convention stripped the proposed constitution of the more radical language of "free expression" of faith to the less controversial mention of highlighting "tolerance" within religion. Madison again served on the Council of State, from 1777 to 1779, when he was elected to the Second Continental Congress, the governing body of the United States. During Madison's term in Congress from 1780 to 1783, the U.S. faced a difficult war against Great Britain, as well as runaway inflation, financial troubles, and a lack of cooperation between the different levels of government. According to historian J. C. A. Stagg, Madison worked to become an expert on financial issues, becoming a legislative workhorse and a master of parliamentary coalition building. Frustrated by the failure of the states to supply needed requisitions, Madison proposed to amend the Articles of Confederation to grant Congress the power to independently raise revenue through tariffs on imports. Though General George Washington, Congressman Alexander Hamilton, and other leaders also favored the tariff amendment, it failed to win the ratification of all thirteen states. While a member of Congress, Madison was an ardent supporter of a close alliance between the United States and France. As an advocate of westward expansion, he insisted that the new nation had to ensure its right to navigation on the Mississippi River and control of all lands east of it in the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War. Following his term in Congress, Madison won election to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1784. ## Ratification of the Constitution As a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Madison continued to advocate for religious freedom, and, along with Jefferson, drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. That amendment, which guaranteed freedom of religion and disestablished the Church of England, was passed in 1786. Madison also became a land speculator, purchasing land along the Mohawk River in partnership with another Jefferson protégé, James Monroe. Throughout the 1780s, Madison became increasingly worried about the disunity of the states and the weakness of the central government. He believed that direct democracy caused social decay and that a Republican government would be effective against partisanship and factionalism. He was particularly troubled by laws that legalized paper money and denied diplomatic immunity to ambassadors from other countries. Madison was also concerned about the lack of ability in Congress to capably create foreign policy, protect American trade, and foster the settlement of the lands between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. As Madison wrote, "a crisis had arrived which was to decide whether the American experiment was to be a blessing to the world, or to blast for ever the hopes which the republican cause had inspired." Madison committed to an intense study of law and political theory and also was influenced by Enlightenment texts sent by Jefferson from France. Madison especially sought out works on international law and the constitutions of "ancient and modern confederacies" such as the Dutch Republic, the Swiss Confederation, and the Achaean League. He came to believe that the United States could improve upon past republican experiments by its size which geographically combined 13 colonies; with so many competing interests, Madison hoped to minimize the abuses of majority rule. Additionally, navigation rights to the major trade routes accessed by the Mississippi River highly concerned Madison. He opposed the proposal by John Jay that the United States concede claims to the river for 25 years, and, according to historian Ralph Ketcham, Madison's desire to fight the proposal was a major motivation in his return to Congress in 1787. Leading up to the 1787 ratification debates for the Constitution, Madison worked with other members of the Virginia delegation, especially Edmund Randolph and George Mason, to create and present the Virginia Plan, an outline for a new federal constitution. It called for three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial), a bicameral Congress (consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives) apportioned by population, and a federal Council of Revision that would have the right to veto laws passed by Congress. The Virginia Plan did not explicitly lay out the structure of the executive branch, but Madison himself favored a strong single executive. Many delegates were surprised to learn that the plan called for the abrogation of the Articles and the creation of a new constitution, to be ratified by special conventions in each state, rather than by the state legislatures. With the assent of prominent attendees such as Washington and Benjamin Franklin, the delegates agreed in a secret session that the abrogation of the Articles and the creation of a new constitution was a plausible option and began scheduling the process of debating its ratification in the individual states. As a compromise between small and large states, large states got a proportional House, while the small states got equal representation in the Senate. After the Philadelphia Convention ended in September 1787, Madison convinced his fellow congressmen to remain neutral in the ratification debate and allow each state to vote on the Constitution. Those who supported the Constitution were called Federalists; that included Madison. Opponents of the Constitution, known as Anti-Federalists, began a public campaign against ratification. In response, starting in October 1787, Hamilton and John Jay, both Federalists, began publishing a series of pro-ratification newspaper articles in New York. After Jay dropped out of the project, Hamilton approached Madison, who was in New York on congressional business, to write some of the essays. The essays were published under the pseudonym of Publius. The trio produced 85 essays known as The Federalist Papers. The 85 essays were divided into two parts: 36 letters against the Articles of Confederation, and 49 letters that favored the new Constitution. The articles were also published in book form and used by the supporters of the Constitution in the ratifying conventions. Federalist No. 10, Madison's first contribution to The Federalist Papers, became highly regarded in the 20th century for its advocacy of representative democracy. In it, Madison describes the dangers posed by the majority factions and argues that their effects can be limited through the formation of a large republic. He theorizes that in large republics the large number of factions that emerge will control their influence because no single faction can become a majority. In Federalist No. 51, he explains how the separation of powers between three branches of the federal government, as well as between state governments and the federal government, establishes a system of checks and balances that ensures that no one institution would become too powerful. As the Virginia ratification convention began, Madison focused his efforts on winning the support of the relatively small number of undecided delegates. His long correspondence with Randolph paid off at the convention, as Randolph announced that he would support unconditional ratification of the Constitution, with amendments to be proposed after ratification. Though former Virginia governor Patrick Henry gave several persuasive speeches arguing against ratification, Madison's expertise on the subject he had long argued for allowed him to respond with rational arguments to Henry's anti-Federalist appeals. Madison was also a defender of federal veto rights and, according to historian Ron Chernow "pleaded at the Constitutional Convention that the federal government should possess a veto over state laws". In his final speech to the ratifying convention, Madison implored his fellow delegates to ratify the Constitution as it had been written, arguing that failure to do so would lead to the collapse of the entire ratification effort, as each state would seek favorable amendments. On June 25, 1788, the convention voted 89–79 in favor of ratification. The vote came a week after New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify, thereby securing the Constitution's adoption and with that, a new form of government. The following January, Washington was elected the nation's first president. ## Congressman and party leader (1789–1801) ### Election to Congress After Virginia ratified the constitution, Madison returned to New York and resumed his duties in the Congress of the Confederation. After Madison was defeated in his bid for the Senate, and with concerns for both his political career and the possibility that Patrick Henry and his allies would arrange for a second constitutional convention, Madison ran for the House of Representatives. Henry and the Anti-Federalists were in firm control of the General Assembly in the autumn of 1788. At Henry's behest, the Virginia legislature designed to deny Madison a seat by gerrymandering congressional districts. Henry and his supporters ensured that Orange County was in a district heavily populated with Anti-Federalists, roughly three to one, to oppose Madison. Henry also recruited James Monroe, a strong challenger to Madison. Locked in a difficult race against Monroe, Madison promised to support a series of constitutional amendments to protect individual liberties. In an open letter, Madison wrote that, while he had opposed requiring alterations to the Constitution before ratification, he now believed that "amendments, if pursued with a proper moderation and in a proper mode ... may serve the double purpose of satisfying the minds of well-meaning opponents, and of providing additional guards in favor of liberty." Madison's promise paid off, as in Virginia's 5th district election, he gained a seat in Congress with 57 percent of the vote. Madison became a key adviser to Washington, who valued Madison's understanding of the Constitution. Madison helped Washington write his first inaugural address and also prepared the official House response to Washington's speech. He played a significant role in establishing and staffing the three Cabinet departments, and his influence helped Thomas Jefferson become the first Secretary of State. At the start of the first Congress, he introduced a tariff bill similar to the one he had advocated for under the Articles of the Confederation, and Congress established a federal tariff on imports by enacting the Tariff of 1789. The following year, Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton introduced an ambitious economic program that called for the federal assumption of state debts and the funding of that debt through the issuance of federal securities. Hamilton's plan favored Northern speculators and was disadvantageous to states, such as Virginia, that had already paid off most of their debt; Madison emerged as one of the principal congressional opponents of the plan. After prolonged legislative deadlock, Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton agreed to the Compromise of 1790, which provided for the enactment of Hamilton's assumption plan, as part of the Funding Act of 1790. In return, Congress passed the Residence Act, which established the federal capital district of Washington, D.C. ### Bill of Rights During the first Congress, Madison took the lead in advocating for several constitutional amendments to the Bill of Rights. His primary goals were to fulfill his 1789 campaign pledge and to prevent the calling of a second constitutional convention, but he also hoped to safeguard the rights and liberties of the people against broad actions of Congress and individual states. He believed that the enumeration of specific rights would fix those rights in the public mind and encourage judges to protect them. After studying more than two hundred amendments that had been proposed at the state ratifying conventions, Madison introduced the Bill of Rights on June 8, 1789. His amendments contained numerous restrictions on the federal government and would protect, among other things, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the right to peaceful assembly. While most of his proposed amendments were drawn from the ratifying conventions, Madison was largely responsible for proposals to guarantee freedom of the press, protect property from government seizure, and ensure jury trials. He also proposed an amendment to prevent states from abridging "equal rights of conscience, or freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases". To prevent a permanent standing federal army, Madison proposed the Second Amendment, which gave state-regulated militia groups and private citizens, the "right to bear arms." Madison and the Republicans desired a free government to be established by the consent of the governed, rather than by national military force. Madison's Bill of Rights faced little opposition; he had largely co-opted the Anti-Federalist goal of amending the Constitution but had avoided proposing amendments that would alienate supporters of the Constitution. His amendments were mostly adopted by the House of Representatives as proposed, but the Senate made several changes. Madison's proposal to apply parts of the Bill of Rights to the states was eliminated, as was his change to the Constitution's preamble which he thought would be enhanced by including a prefatory paragraph indicating that governmental power is vested by the people. He was disappointed that the Bill of Rights did not include protections against actions by state governments, but the passage of the document mollified some critics of the original constitution and shored up his support in Virginia. Ten amendments were finally ratified on December 15, 1791, becoming known in their final form as the Bill of Rights. ### Founding the Democratic–Republican Party After 1790, the Washington administration became polarized into two main factions. One faction, led by Jefferson and Madison, broadly represented Southern interests and sought close relations with France. This faction became the Democratic-Republican Party opposition to Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton. The other faction, led by Hamilton and the Federalists, broadly represented Northern financial interests and favored close relations with Britain. In 1791, Hamilton introduced a plan that called for the establishment of a national bank to provide loans to emerging industries and oversee the money supply. Madison and the Democratic-Republican Party fought back against Hamilton's attempt to expand the power of the Federal Government with the formation of a national bank; Madison argued that under the Constitution, Congress did not have the power to create a federally empowered national bank. Despite Madison's opposition, Congress passed a bill to create the First Bank of the United States, which Washington signed into law in February 1791. As Hamilton implemented his economic program and Washington continued to enjoy immense prestige as president, Madison became increasingly concerned that Hamilton would seek to abolish the federal republic in favor of a centralized monarchy. When Hamilton submitted his Report on Manufactures, which called for federal action to stimulate the development of a diversified economy, Madison once again challenged Hamilton's proposal. Along with Jefferson, Madison helped Philip Freneau establish the National Gazette, a Philadelphia newspaper that attacked Hamilton's proposals. In an essay in the newspaper in September 1792, Madison wrote that the country had divided into two factions: his faction, which believed "that mankind are capable of governing themselves", and Hamilton's faction, which allegedly sought the establishment of an aristocratic monarchy and was biased in favor of the wealthy. Those opposed to Hamilton's economic policies, including many former Anti-Federalists, continued to strengthen the ranks of the Democratic–Republican Party, while those who supported the administration's policies supported Hamilton's Federalist Party. In the 1792 presidential election, both major parties supported Washington for re-election, but the Democratic–Republicans sought to unseat Vice President John Adams. Because the Constitution's rules essentially precluded Jefferson from challenging Adams, the party backed New York Governor George Clinton for the vice presidency, but Adams won nonetheless. With Jefferson out of office after 1793, Madison became the de facto leader of the Democratic–Republican Party. When Britain and France went to war in 1793, the U.S. needed to determine which side to support. While the differences between the Democratic–Republicans and the Federalists had previously centered on economic matters, foreign policy became an increasingly important issue, as Madison and Jefferson favored France and Hamilton favored Britain. War with Britain became imminent in 1794 after the British seized hundreds of American ships that were trading with French colonies. Madison believed that a trade war with Britain would probably succeed, and would allow Americans to assert their independence fully. The British West Indies, Madison maintained, could not live without American foodstuffs, but Americans could easily do without British manufacturers. Similarly, Madison argued that British industry was highly dependent on the demand of American consumers and would suffer heavily if this market was denied to the British. Washington secured friendly trade relations with Britain through the Jay Treaty of 1794. Madison and his Democratic–Republican allies were outraged by the treaty; the Democratic–Republican Robert R. Livingston wrote to Madison that the treaty "sacrifices every essential interest and prostrates the honor of our country". Madison's strong opposition to the treaty led to a permanent break with Washington, ending their friendship. ### Marriage and family On September 15, 1794, Madison married Dolley Payne Todd, the 26-year-old widow of John Todd, a Quaker farmer who died during a yellow fever epidemic. Earlier that year, Madison and Dolley Todd had been formally introduced at Madison's request by Aaron Burr. Burr had become friends with her when staying at the same Philadelphia boardinghouse. The two quickly became romantically engaged and prepared for a wedding that summer, but Todd suffered recurring illnesses because of her exposure to yellow fever in Philadelphia. They eventually traveled to Harewood in Virginia for their wedding. Only a few close family members attended, and Winchester reverend Alexander Balmain presided. Dolley became a renowned figure in Washington, D.C., and excelled at hosting. She subsequently helped to establish the modern image of the first lady of the United States as an individual who has a leading role in the social affairs of the nation. Throughout his life, Madison maintained a close relationship with his father, James Sr. At age 50, Madison inherited the large plantation of Montpelier and other possessions, including his father's slaves. While Madison never had children with Dolley, he adopted her one surviving son, John Payne Todd (known as Payne), after the couple's marriage. Some of his colleagues, such as Monroe and Burr, believed Madison's lack of offspring weighed on his thoughts, though he never spoke of any distress. Oral history has suggested Madison may have fathered a child with his enslaved half-sister, a cook named Coreen, but researchers were unable to gather the DNA evidence needed to determine the validity of the accusation. ### Adams presidency Washington chose to retire after serving two terms and, in advance of the 1796 presidential election, Madison helped convince Jefferson to run for the presidency. Despite Madison's efforts, Federalist candidate John Adams defeated Jefferson, taking a narrow majority of the electoral vote. Under the rules of the Electoral College then in place, Jefferson became vice president because he finished with the second-most electoral votes. Madison, meanwhile, had declined to seek re-election to the House, and he returned to Montpelier. On Jefferson's advice, Adams considered appointing Madison to an American delegation charged with ending French attacks on American shipping, but Adams's cabinet members strongly opposed the idea. Though he was out of office, Madison remained a prominent Democratic–Republican leader in opposition to the Adams administration. Madison and Jefferson believed that the Federalists were using the Quasi-War with France to justify the violation of constitutional rights by passing the Alien and Sedition Acts, and they increasingly came to view Adams as a monarchist. Both Madison and Jefferson expressed the belief that natural rights were non-negotiable even in war. Madison believed that the Alien and Sedition Acts formed a dangerous precedent, by giving the government the power to look past the natural rights of its people in the name of national security. In response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson argued that the states had the power to nullify federal law on the basis of the Constitution being a compact among the states. Madison rejected this view of nullification and urged that states respond to unjust federal laws through interposition, a process by which a state legislature declared a law to be unconstitutional but did not take steps to actively prevent its enforcement. Jefferson's doctrine of nullification was widely rejected, and the incident damaged the Democratic–Republican Party as attention was shifted from the Alien and Sedition Acts to the unpopular nullification doctrine. In 1799, Madison was elected to the Virginia legislature. At the same time, Madison planned for Jefferson's campaign in the 1800 presidential election. Madison issued the Report of 1800, which attacked the Alien and Sedition Acts as unconstitutional. That report held that Congress was limited to legislating on its enumerated powers and that punishment for sedition violated freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Jefferson embraced the report, and it became the unofficial Democratic–Republican platform for the 1800 election. With the Federalists divided between supporters of Hamilton and Adams, and with news of the end of the Quasi-War not reaching the United States until after the election, Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, defeated Adams. ## Secretary of State (1801–1809) Madison was one of two major influences in Jefferson's cabinet, the other being Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. Madison was appointed secretary of state despite lacking foreign policy experience. An introspective individual, he received assistance from his wife, relying deeply on her in dealing with the social pressures of being a public figure both in his own Cabinet appointment as secretary of state and afterward. As the ascent of Napoleon in France had dulled Democratic–Republican enthusiasm for the French cause, Madison sought a neutral position in the ongoing Coalition Wars between France and Britain. Domestically, the Jefferson administration and the Democratic–Republican Congress rolled back many Federalist policies; Congress quickly repealed the Alien and Sedition Act, abolished internal taxes, and reduced the size of the army and navy. Gallatin, however, convinced Jefferson to retain the First Bank of the United States. Though the Federalist political power was rapidly fading at the national level, Chief Justice John Marshall ensured that Federalist ideology retained an important presence in the judiciary. In the case of Marbury v. Madison, Marshall simultaneously ruled that Madison had unjustly refused to deliver federal commissions to individuals who had been appointed by the previous administration, but that the Supreme Court did not have jurisdiction over the case. Most importantly, Marshall's opinion established the principle of judicial review. Jefferson was sympathetic to the westward expansion of Americans who had settled as far west as the Mississippi River, supported by his concern for the sparse regional demographics in the far west compared to the more populated eastern states, the far west being inhabited almost exclusively by Native Americans. Jefferson promoted such western expansion and hoped to acquire the Spanish territory of Louisiana, west of the Mississippi River, for expansionist purposes. Early in Jefferson's presidency, the administration learned that Spain planned to retrocede the Louisiana territory to France, raising fears of French encroachment on U.S. territory. In 1802, Jefferson and Madison sent Monroe to France to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans, which controlled access to the Mississippi River and thus was immensely important to the farmers of the American frontier. Rather than merely selling New Orleans, Napoleon's government offered to sell the entire territory of Louisiana. Despite lacking explicit authorization from Jefferson, Monroe, along with Livingston, whom Jefferson had appointed as America's minister to France, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, in which France sold more than 827,987 square miles (2,144,480 square kilometers) of land in exchange for $15 million (). Despite the time-sensitive nature of negotiations with the French, Jefferson was concerned about the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase, and he privately favored introducing a constitutional amendment explicitly authorizing Congress to acquire new territories. Madison convinced Jefferson to refrain from proposing the amendment, and the administration ultimately submitted the Louisiana Purchase Treaty for approval by the Senate, without an accompanying constitutional amendment. Unlike Jefferson, Madison was not seriously concerned with the constitutionality of the purchase. He believed that the circumstances did not warrant a strict interpretation of the Constitution, because the expansion was in the country's best interest. The Senate quickly ratified the treaty, and the House, with equal alacrity, passed enabling legislation. Early in his tenure, Jefferson was able to maintain cordial relations with both France and Britain, but relations with Britain deteriorated after 1805. The British ended their policy of tolerance towards American shipping and began seizing American goods headed for French ports. They also impressed American sailors, some of whom had originally defected from the British navy, but some of whom had never been British subjects. In response to the attacks, Congress passed the Non-importation Act, which restricted many, but not all, British imports. Tensions with Britain were heightened due to the Chesapeake–Leopard affair, a June 1807 naval confrontation between American and British naval forces, while the French also began attacking American shipping. Madison believed that economic pressure could force the British to end their seizure of American shipped goods, and he and Jefferson convinced Congress to pass the Embargo Act of 1807, which banned all exports to foreign nations. The embargo proved ineffective, unpopular, and difficult to enforce, especially in New England. In March 1809, Congress replaced the embargo with the Non-Intercourse Act, which allowed trade with nations other than Britain and France. ### 1808 presidential election Speculation regarding Madison's potential succession to Jefferson commenced early in Jefferson's first term. Madison's status in the party was damaged by his association with the embargo, which was unpopular throughout the country and especially in the Northeast. With the Federalists collapsing as a national party after 1800, the chief opposition to Madison's candidacy came from other members of the Democratic–Republican Party. Madison became the target of attacks from Congressman John Randolph, a leader of a faction of the party known as the tertium quids. Randolph recruited Monroe, who had felt betrayed by the administration's rejection of the proposed Monroe–Pinkney Treaty with Britain, to challenge Madison for leadership of the party. Many Northerners, meanwhile, hoped that Vice President Clinton could unseat Madison as Jefferson's successor. Despite this opposition, Madison won his party's presidential nomination at the January 1808 congressional nominating caucus. The Federalist Party mustered little strength outside New England, and Madison easily defeated Federalist candidate Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in the general election. ## Presidency (1809–1817) ### Inauguration and cabinet Madison's inauguration took place on March 4, 1809, in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol. Chief Justice Marshall administered the presidential oath of office to Madison while outgoing President Jefferson watched. Vice President George Clinton was sworn in for a second term, making him the first U.S. vice president to serve under two presidents. Unlike Jefferson, who enjoyed relatively unified support, Madison faced political opposition from previous political allies such as Monroe and Clinton. Additionally, the Federalist Party was resurgent owing to opposition to the embargo. Aside from his planned nomination of Gallatin for secretary of state, the remaining members of Madison's Cabinet were chosen merely to further political harmony, and, according to historians Ketcham and Rutland, were largely unremarkable or incompetent. Due to the opposition of Monroe and Clinton, Madison immediately faced opposition to his planned nomination of Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin as secretary of state. Madison eventually chose not to nominate Gallatin, keeping him in the treasury department. Madison settled instead for Robert Smith to be the secretary of state. However, for the next two years, Madison performed most of the job of the secretary of state due to Smith's incompetence. After bitter intra-party contention, Madison finally replaced Smith with Monroe in April 1811. With a Cabinet full of those he distrusted, Madison rarely called Cabinet meetings and instead frequently consulted with Gallatin alone. Early in his presidency, Madison sought to continue Jefferson's policies of low taxes and a reduction of the national debt. In 1811, Congress allowed the charter of the First Bank of the United States to lapse after Madison declined to take a strong stance on the issue. ### War of 1812 #### Prelude to war Congress had repealed the Embargo Act of 1807 shortly before Madison became president, but troubles with the British and French continued. Madison settled on a new strategy that was designed to pit the British and French against each other, offering to trade with whichever country would end their attacks against American shipping. The gambit almost succeeded, but negotiations with the British collapsed in mid-1809. Seeking to drive a wedge between the Americans and the British, Napoleon offered to end French attacks on American shipping so long as the United States punished any countries that did not similarly end restrictions on trade. Madison accepted Napoleon's proposal in the hope that it would convince the British to finally end their policy of commercial warfare. Notwithstanding, the British refused to change their policies, and the French reneged on their promise and continued to attack American shipping. With sanctions and other policies having failed, Madison determined that war with Britain was the only remaining option. Many Americans called for a "second war of independence" to restore honor and stature to their new nation, and an angry public elected a "war hawk" Congress, led by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. With Britain already engaged in the Napoleonic Wars, many Americans including Madison believed that the United States could easily capture Canada, using it as a bargaining chip for other disputes or simply retaining control of it. On June 1, 1812, Madison asked Congress for a declaration of war, stating that the United States could no longer tolerate Britain's "state of war against the United States". The declaration of war was passed along sectional and party lines, with opposition to the declaration coming from Federalists and from some Democratic–Republicans in the Northeast. In the years prior to the war, Jefferson and Madison had reduced the size of the military, leaving the country with a military force consisting mostly of poorly trained militia members. Madison asked Congress to quickly put the country "into an armor and an attitude demanded by the crisis", specifically recommending expansion of the army and navy. #### Military actions Given the circumstances involving Napoleon in Europe, Madison initially believed the war would result in a quick American victory. Madison ordered three landed military spearhead incursions into Canada, starting from Fort Detroit, designed to loosen British control around American-held Fort Niagara and destroy the British supply lines from Montreal. These actions would gain leverage for concessions to protect American shipping in the Atlantic. Without a standing army, Madison counted on regular state militias to rally to the flag and invade Canada: still, governors in the Northeast failed to cooperate. The British army was more organized, used professional soldiers, and fostered an alliance with Native American tribes led by Tecumseh. On August 16, during the British siege of Detroit, Major General William Hull panicked, after the British fired on the fort, killing two American officers. Terrified of an Indian attack, drinking heavily, Hull quickly ordered a white tablecloth out a window and unconditionally surrendered Fort Detroit and his entire army to British Major-General Sir Issac Brock. Hull was court-martialed for cowardice, but Madison intervened and saved him from being shot. On October 13, a separate force from the United States was defeated at Queenston Heights, although Brock was killed. Commanding General Henry Dearborn, hampered by mutinous New England infantry, retreated to winter quarters near Albany, failing to destroy Montreal's vulnerable British supply lines. Lacking adequate revenue to fund the war, the Madison administration was forced to rely on high-interest loans furnished by bankers in New York City and Philadelphia. In the 1812 presidential election, held during the early stages of the war, Madison was re-nominated without opposition. A dissident group of New York Democratic-Republicans nominated DeWitt Clinton, the lieutenant governor of New York and a nephew of recently deceased Vice President George Clinton, to oppose Madison in the 1812 election. This faction of Democratic-Republicans hoped to unseat the president by forging a coalition among Democratic-Republicans opposed to the coming war, as well as those party faithful angry with Madison for not moving more decisively toward war, northerners weary of the Virginia dynasty and southern control of the White House, and many New Englanders wanted Madison replaced. Dismayed about their prospects of beating Madison, a group of top Federalists met with Clinton's supporters to discuss a unification strategy. Difficult as it was for them to join forces, they nominated Clinton for President and Jared Ingersoll, a Philadelphia lawyer, for vice president. Hoping to shore up his support in the Northeast, where the War of 1812 was unpopular, Madison selected Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts as his running mate, though Gerry would only survive two years after the election due to old age. Despite the maneuverings of Clinton and the Federalists, Madison won re-election, though by the narrowest margin of any election since that of 1800 in the popular vote as later supported by the electoral vote as well. He received 128 electoral votes to 89 for Clinton. With Clinton winning most of the Northeast, Madison won Pennsylvania in addition to having swept the South and the West which ensured his victory. After the disastrous start to the war, Madison accepted Russia's invitation to arbitrate and sent a delegation led by Gallatin and John Quincy Adams (the son of former President John Adams) to Europe to negotiate a peace treaty. While Madison worked to end the war, the United States experienced some impressive naval successes, by the USS Constitution and other warships, that boosted American morale. Victorious in the Battle of Lake Erie, the U.S. crippled the supply and reinforcement of British military forces in the western theater of the war. General William Henry Harrison defeated the forces of the British and of Tecumseh's confederacy at the Battle of the Thames. The death of Tecumseh in that battle marked the permanent end of armed Native American resistance in the Old Northwest and any hope of a united Indian nation. In March 1814, Major General Andrew Jackson broke the resistance of the British-allied Muscogee Creek in the Old Southwest with his victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Despite those successes, the British continued to repel American attempts to invade Canada, and a British force captured Fort Niagara and burned the American city of Buffalo in late 1813. On August 24, 1814, the British landed a large force on the shores of Chesapeake Bay and routed General William Winder's army at the Battle of Bladensburg. Madison, who had earlier inspected Winder's army, escaped British capture by fleeing to Virginia, though the British captured Washington and burned many of its buildings, including the White House. Dolley had abandoned the capital and fled to Virginia, but only after securing the portrait of George Washington. The charred remains of the capital signified a humiliating defeat for James Madison and America. On August 27, Madison returned to Washington to view the carnage of the city. Dolley returned the next day, and on September 8, the Madisons moved into the Octagon House. The British army next advanced on Baltimore, but the U.S. repelled the British attack in the Battle of Baltimore, and the British army departed from the Chesapeake region in September. That same month, U.S. forces repelled a British invasion from Canada with a victory at the Battle of Plattsburgh. The British public began to turn against the war in North America, and British leaders began to look for a quick exit from the conflict. In January 1815, Jackson's troops defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans. Just more than a month later, Madison learned that his negotiators had concluded the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, which ended the war. Madison quickly sent the treaty to the Senate, which ratified it on February 16, 1815. Although the overall result of the war ended in a standoff, the quick succession of events at the end of the war, including the burning of the capital, the Battle of New Orleans, and the Treaty of Ghent, made it appear as though American valor at New Orleans had forced the British to surrender. This view, while inaccurate, strongly contributed to bolstering Madison's reputation as president. Napoleon's defeat at the June 1815 Battle of Waterloo brought a final close to the Napoleonic Wars and thus an end to the hostile seizure of American shipping by British and French forces. ### Postwar period and decline of the Federalist opposition The postwar period of Madison's second term saw the transition into the "Era of Good Feelings" between mid-1815 and 1817, with the Federalists experiencing a further decline in influence. During the war, delegates from the New England states held the Hartford Convention, where they asked for several amendments to the Constitution. Though the Hartford Convention did not explicitly call for the secession of New England, the Convention became an adverse political millstone around the Federalist Party as general American sentiment had moved towards a celebrated unity among the states in what they saw as a successful "second war of independence" from Britain. Madison hastened the decline of the Federalists by adopting several programs he had previously opposed. Recognizing the difficulties of financing the war and the necessity of an institution to regulate American currency, Madison proposed the re-establishment of a national bank. He also called for increased spending on the army and the navy, a tariff designed to protect American goods from foreign competition, and a constitutional amendment authorizing the federal government to fund the construction of internal improvements such as roads and canals. Madison's initiatives to now act on behalf of a national bank appeared to reverse his earlier opposition to Hamilton and were opposed by strict constructionists such as John Randolph, who stated that Madison's proposals now "out-Hamiltons Alexander Hamilton". Responding to Madison's proposals, the 14th Congress compiled one of the most productive legislative records up to that point in history. Congress granted the Second Bank of the United States a twenty-five-year charter and passed the Tariff of 1816, which set high import duties for all goods that were produced outside the United States. Madison approved federal spending on the Cumberland Road, which provided a link to the country's western lands; still, in his last act before leaving office, he blocked further federal spending on internal improvements by vetoing the Bonus Bill of 1817 arguing that it unduly exceeded the limits of the General Welfare Clause concerning such improvements. ### Native American policy Upon becoming president, Madison said the federal government's duty was to convert Native Americans by the "participation of the improvements of which the human mind and manners are susceptible in a civilized state". In 1809, General Harrison began to push for a treaty to open more land for white American settlement. The Miami, Wea, and Kickapoo were vehemently opposed to selling any more land around the Wabash River. Harrison decided, against the wishes of Madison, to first conclude a treaty with the tribes who were willing to sell and use those treaties to help influence those who held out. In September 1809, Harrison invited the Potawatomie, Delaware, Eel Rivers, and Miami to a meeting in Fort Wayne. Harrison promised large subsidies and direct payments to the tribes if they would cede the other lands under discussion. On September 30, 1809, Madison agreed to the Treaty of Fort Wayne, negotiated and signed by Indiana Territory's Governor Harrison. In the treaty, the American Indian tribes were compensated $5,200 () in goods and $500 in cash (), with $250 in annual payments (), in return for the cession of 3 million acres of land (approximately 12,140 square kilometers) with incentivized subsidies paid to individual tribes for exerting their influence over less cooperative tribes. The treaty angered Shawnee leader Tecumseh, who said, "Sell a country\! Why not sell the air, the clouds and the great sea, as well as the earth?" Like Jefferson, Madison had a paternalistic attitude toward American Indians, encouraging them to become farmers. Madison believed the adoption of European-style agriculture would help Native Americans assimilate the values of British–U.S. civilization. As pioneers and settlers moved West into large tracts of Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw territory, Madison ordered the U.S. Army to protect Native lands from intrusion by settlers. This was done to the chagrin of his military commander Andrew Jackson, who wanted Madison to ignore Indian pleas to stop the invasion of their lands. Tensions continued to mount between the United States and Tecumseh over the 1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne, which ultimately led to Tecumseh's alliance with the British and the Battle of Tippecanoe, on November 7, 1811, in the Northwest Territory. The divisions among the Native American leaders were bitter and before leaving the discussions, Tecumseh informed Harrison that unless the terms of the negotiated treaty were largely nullified, he would seek an alliance with the British. The situation continued to escalate, eventually leading to the outbreak of hostilities between Tecumseh's followers and American settlers later that year. Tensions continued to rise, leading to the Battle of Tippecanoe during a period sometimes called Tecumseh's War. Tecumseh was defeated and Indians were pushed off their tribal lands, replaced entirely by white settlers. In addition to the Battle of the Thames and the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, other wars with American Indians included the Peoria War, and the Creek War. Negotiated by Jackson, in the aftermath of the Creek War, the Treaty of Fort Jackson of August 9, 1814, added approximately 23 million acres of land (93,000 square kilometers) to Georgia and Alabama. Privately, Madison did not believe American Indians could be fully assimilated to the values of Euro-American culture and may have been unwilling to make "the transition from the hunter, or even the herdsman state, to the agriculture". Madison feared that Native Americans had too great an influence on the settlers they interacted with, who in his view was "irresistibly attracted by that complete liberty, that freedom from bonds, obligations, duties, that absence of care and anxiety which characterize the savage state". In March 1816, Madison's Secretary of War William Crawford advocated for the government to encourage intermarriages between Native Americans and Whites as a way of assimilating the former. This prompted public outrage and exacerbated anti-Indigenous bigotry among White Americans, as seen in hostile letters sent to Madison, who remained publicly silent on the issue. ### Election of 1816 In the 1816 presidential election, Madison and Jefferson both favored the candidacy of Secretary of State James Monroe, who defeated Secretary of War William H. Crawford in the party's congressional nominating caucus. As the Federalist Party continued to collapse, Monroe easily defeated Federalist candidate, New York Senator Rufus King, in the 1816 election. Madison left office as a popular president; former president Adams wrote that Madison had "acquired more glory, and established more union, than all his three predecessors, Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, put together". ## Post-presidency (1817–1836) When Madison left office in 1817 at age 65, he retired to Montpelier. As with both Washington and Jefferson, Madison left the presidency poorer than when he came in. His plantation experienced a steady financial collapse, due to price declines in tobacco and his stepson's mismanagement. In his retirement, Madison occasionally became involved in public affairs, advising Andrew Jackson and other presidents. He remained out of the public debate over the Missouri Compromise, though he privately complained about the North's opposition to the extension of slavery. Madison had warm relations with all four of the major candidates in the 1824 presidential election, but, like Jefferson, largely stayed out of the race. During Jackson's presidency, Madison publicly disavowed the Nullification movement and argued that no state had the right to secede. Madison also helped Jefferson establish the University of Virginia. In 1826, after the death of Jefferson, Madison was appointed as the second rector of the university. He retained the position as college chancellor for ten years until his death in 1836. In 1829, at the age of 78, Madison was chosen as a representative to the Virginia Constitutional Convention for revision of the commonwealth's constitution. It was his last appearance as a statesman. Apportionment of adequate representation was the central issue at the convention for the western districts of Virginia. The increased population in the Piedmont and western parts of the state were not proportionately represented in the legislature. Western reformers also wanted to extend suffrage to all white men, in place of the prevailing property ownership requirement. Madison made modest gains but was disappointed at the failure of Virginians to extend suffrage to all white men. In his later years, Madison became highly concerned about his historical legacy. He resorted to modifying letters and other documents in his possession, changing days and dates, and adding and deleting words and sentences. By his late seventies, Madison's self-editing of his own archived letters and older materials had become almost an obsession. As an example, he edited a letter written to Jefferson criticizing Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette; Madison not only inked out original passages but in other correspondence he even forged Jefferson's handwriting. Historian Drew R. McCoy wrote: > During the final six years of his life, amid a sea of personal [financial] troubles that were threatening to engulf him ... At times mental agitation issued in physical collapse. For the better part of a year in 1831 and 1832 he was bedridden, if not silenced ... Literally sick with anxiety, he began to despair of his ability to make himself understood by his fellow citizens. ### Death Madison's health slowly deteriorated through the 1830s. He died of congestive heart failure at Montpelier on the morning of June 28, 1836, at the age of 85. According to one common account of his final moments, he was given his breakfast, which he tried eating but was unable to swallow. His favorite niece, Nellie Madison Willis, who sat by to keep him company, asked him, "What is the matter, Uncle James?" Madison died immediately after he replied, "Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear." He was buried in the family cemetery at Montpelier. He was one of the last prominent members of the Revolutionary War generation to die. His last will and testament left significant sums to the American Colonization Society, Princeton, and the University of Virginia, as well as $30,000 ($897,000 in 2021) to his wife, Dolley. Left with a smaller sum than James had intended, Dolley suffered financial troubles until her death in 1849. In the 1840s Dolley sold Montpelier, its remaining slaves, and the furnishings to pay off outstanding debts. Paul Jennings, one of Madison's younger slaves, later recalled in his memoir, > In the last days of her life, before Congress purchased her husband's papers, she was in a state of absolute poverty, and I think sometimes suffered for the necessaries of life. While I was a servant to Mr. Webster, he often sent me to her with a market-basket full of provisions, and told me whenever I saw anything in the house that I thought she was in need of, to take it to her. I often did this, and occasionally gave her small sums from my own pocket, though I had years before bought my freedom of her. ## Political and religious views ### Federalism During his first stint in Congress in the 1780s, Madison came to favor amending the Articles of Confederation to provide for a stronger central government. In the 1790s, he led the opposition to Hamilton's centralizing policies and the Alien and Sedition Acts. Madison's support of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions in the 1790s has been referred to as "a breathtaking evolution for a man who had pleaded at the Constitutional Convention that the federal government should possess a veto over state laws". Others historians disagree, and see Madison's political philosophy as remarkably consistent. Perhaps more importantly, they point out that Madison's loyalty was to the Constitution, not to his personal preferences. Madison had advocated in the debates of the Constitutional Convention that the proposed federal government have veto power over state laws, but he was willing to follow the Constitution as it was adopted and ratified, rather than what he might have wished that it said. Madison had written in Federalist \#45 that the proposed federal government would have powers that were "few and defined" (as enumerated in Article I of the Constitution). He felt strongly that to interpret it otherwise would be a breach of faith with "We the People" who had ratified the Constitution based on that understanding. Madison, who was the author of the Bill of Rights, was also faithfully following the 10th Amendment, which says that all "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." ### Religion Although baptized as an Anglican and educated by Presbyterian clergymen, young Madison was an avid reader of English deist tracts. As an adult, Madison paid little attention to religious matters. Though most historians have found little indication of his religious leanings after he left college, some scholars indicate he leaned toward deism. Others maintain that Madison accepted Christian tenets and formed his outlook on life with a Christian worldview. Regardless of his own religious beliefs, Madison believed in religious liberty, and he advocated for Virginia's disestablishment of religious institutions sponsored by the state. He also opposed the appointments of chaplains for Congress and the armed forces, arguing that the appointments produce religious exclusion as well as political disharmony. ## Slavery Throughout his life, Madison's views on slavery were conflicted. He was born into a plantation society that relied on slave labor, and both sides of his family profited from tobacco farming. While he viewed slavery as essential to the Southern economy, he was troubled by the instability of a society that depended on a large slave population. Madison also believed slavery was incompatible with American Revolutionary principles, though he owned over one hundred African American slaves. According to historian Paris Spies-Gans, Madison's anti-slavery thought was strongest "at the height of Revolutionary politics. But by the early 1800s, when in a position to truly impact policy, he failed to follow through on these views." Spies-Gans concluded, "[u]ltimately, Madison's personal dependence on slavery led him to question his own, once enlightened, definition of liberty itself." Madison grew up on Montpelier, which like other southern plantations depended on slave labor. When Madison left for college on August 10, 1769, he arrived at Princeton accompanied by his slave Sawney, who was charged with Madison's expenses and with relaying messages to his family back home. In 1783, fearing the possibility of a slave rebellion at Montpelier, Madison emancipated one slave, Billey, selling him into a seven-year apprentice contract. After his manumission, Billey changed his name to William Gardner and became a shipping agent, representing Madison in Philadelphia. Madison inherited Montpelier and its more than one hundred slaves after his father's death in 1801. That same year, Madison moved to Washington D.C., running Montpelier from afar making no effort to free his slaves. After his election to the presidency in 1808, Madison brought his slaves to the White House. During the 1820s and 1830s, Madison sold some of his land and slaves to repay debt. In 1836, at the time of Madison's death, he owned 36 taxable slaves. In his will, Madison gave his remaining slaves to his wife Dolley and charged her not to sell the slaves without their permission. For reasons of necessity, Dolley sold the slaves without their permission to pay off debts. As was consistent with the "established social norms of Virginia society", Madison was known from his farm papers for advocating the humane treatment of his slaves. He instructed an overseer to "treat the Negroes with all the humanity and kindness consistent with their necessary subordination and work." Madison also ensured that his slaves had milk cows and meals for their daily food. By the 1790s, Madison's slave Sawney was an overseer of part of the plantation. Some slaves at Montpelier could read. Paul Jennings was a slave of the Madisons for 48 years and served as Madison's footman at the White House. In his memoir A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison, published in 1865, Jennings said that he "never knew [Madison] to strike a slave, although he had over one hundred; neither would he allow an overseer to do it." Although Jennings condemned slavery, he said that James was "one of the best men that ever lived", and that Dolley was "a remarkably fine woman." Madison called slavery "the most oppressive dominion" that ever existed, and he had a "lifelong abhorrence" for it. In 1785 Madison spoke in the Virginia Assembly favoring a bill that Thomas Jefferson had proposed for the gradual abolition of slavery, and he also helped defeat a bill designed to outlaw the manumission of individual slaves. As a slaveholder, Madison was aware that owning slaves was not consistent with revolutionary values, but, as a pragmatist, this sort of self-contradiction was a common feature in his political career. Historian Drew R. McCoy said that Madison's antislavery principles were indeed "impeccable." Historian Ralph Ketcham said, "[a]lthough Madison abhorred slavery, he nonetheless bore the burden of depending all his life on a slave system that he could never square with his republican beliefs." There is no evidence Madison thought black people were inferior. Madison believed blacks and whites were unlikely to co-exist peacefully due to "the prejudices of the whites" as well as feelings on both sides "inspired by their former relation as oppressors and oppressed." As such, he became interested in the idea of freedmen establishing colonies in Africa and later served as the president of the American Colonization Society, which relocated former slaves to Liberia. Madison believed that this solution offered a gradual, long-term, but potentially feasible means of eradicating slavery in the United States, but that peaceful co-existence between the two racial groups could eventually be achieved in the long run. Madison initially opposed the Constitution's 20-year protection of the foreign slave trade, but he eventually accepted it as a necessary compromise to get the South to ratify the document. He also proposed that apportionment in the House of Representatives be according to each state's free and enslaved population, eventually leading to the adoption of the Three-fifths Compromise. Madison supported the extension of slavery into the West during the Missouri crisis of 1819–1821, asserting that the spread of slavery would not lead to more slaves, but rather diminish their generative increase through dispersing them, thus substantially improving their condition, accelerating emancipation, easing racial tensions, and increasing "partial manumissions." Madison thought of slaves as "wayward (but still educable) students in need of regular guidance." ## Legacy Regarded as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Madison had a wide influence on the founding of the nation and upon the early development of American constitutional government and foreign policy. Historian J.C.A. Stagg writes that "in some ways—because he was on the winning side of every important issue facing the young nation from 1776 to 1816—Madison was the most successful and possibly the most influential of all the Founding Fathers." Though he helped found a major political party and served as the fourth president, his legacy has largely been defined by his contributions to the Constitution; even in his own life he was hailed as the "Father of the Constitution". Law professor Noah Feldman writes that Madison "invented and theorized the modern ideal of an expanded, federal constitution that combines local self-government with an overarching national order". Feldman adds that Madison's "model of liberty-protecting constitutional government" is "the most influential American idea in global political history". Various rankings of historians and political scientists tend to rank Madison as an above average president with a 2018 poll of the American Political Science Association's Presidents and Executive Politics section ranking Madison as the twelfth best president. Various historians have criticized Madison's tenure as president. In 1968, Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris said the conventional view of Madison was of an "incapable President" who "mismanaged an unnecessary war". A 2006 poll of historians ranked Madison's failure to prevent the War of 1812 as the sixth-worst mistake made by a sitting president. Regarding Madison's consistency and adaptability of policy-making during his many years of political activity, historian Gordon S. Wood says that Lance Banning, as in his Sacred Fire of Liberty (1995), is the "only present-day scholar to maintain that Madison did not change his views in the 1790s". During and after the War of 1812, Madison came to support several of the policies that he opposed in the 1790s, including the national bank, a strong navy, and direct taxes. Wood notes that many historians struggle to understand Madison, but Wood looks at him in the terms of Madison's own times—as a nationalist but one with a different conception of nationalism from that of the Federalists. Gary Rosen uses other approaches to suggest Madison's consistency. Historian Garry Wills wrote, "Madison's claim on our admiration does not rest on a perfect consistency, any more than it rests on his presidency. He has other virtues. ... As a framer and defender of the Constitution he had no peer. ... No man could do everything for the country—not even Washington. Madison did more than most, and did some things better than any. That was quite enough." Montpelier, the Madison family's plantation, has been designated a National Historic Landmark. The James Madison Memorial Building is part of the United States Library of Congress and serves as the official memorial to Madison. In 1986, Congress created the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation as part of the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution. Other memorials include Madison, Wisconsin and Madison County, Alabama which were both named for Madison, as were Madison Square Garden, James Madison University, and the USS James Madison. In 2021, the Madison Metropolitan School District renamed James Madison Memorial High School following community opposition to commemorating someone who used slave labor. Madison, portrayed by Burgess Meredith, is a key protagonist in the 1946 film Magnificent Doll, a fictionalized account of Dolley Madison's romantic life. Madison is also portrayed in the popular musical Hamilton, played by Joshua Henry in the original 2013 Vassar version and then revised by Okieriete Onaodowan for the 2015 Broadway opening. Onaodowan won a Grammy Award for his portrayal of Madison. ## See also - List of presidents of the United States - List of presidents of the United States by previous experience - List of presidents of the United States who owned slaves - Founders Online

1 Wall Street

Residential skyscraper in Manhattan, New York

1 Wall Street (also known as the Irving Trust Company Building, the Bank of New York Building, and the BNY Mellon Building) is a skyscraper in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City, United States. Designed in the Art Deco style, the building is 654 feet (199 m) tall and consists of two sections. The original 50-story building was designed by Ralph Thomas Walker of the firm Voorhees, Gmelin and Walker and constructed between 1929 and 1931 for Irving Trust, an early-20th-century American bank. A 28-story annex to the south (later expanded to 36 stories) was designed by successor firm Voorhees, Walker, Smith, Smith & Haines and built between 1963 and 1965. The building occupies a full city block between Broadway, Wall Street, New Street, and Exchange Place. The limestone facade consists of slight inwardly-curved bays with fluting to resemble curtains. On the lower stories are narrow windows and elaborate entrances. The massing of 1 Wall Street incorporates numerous small setbacks, and there are chamfers at the corners of the original building. The top of the original building consists of a freestanding tower with fluted windowless bays. The facade of the annex is crafted in a style reminiscent of the original structure. The original building has an ornate lobby, known as the Red Room, with colored mosaics. Originally, the 10th through 45th floors were rented to outside tenants, while the other floors contained offices, lounges, and other spaces for Irving Trust. After 1 Wall Street was converted to a residential building, the upper stories were divided into 566 condominium apartments. At the time of its construction, 1 Wall Street occupied what was one of the most valuable plots in the city. The building replaced three previous structures, including the Manhattan Life Insurance Building, which was once the world's tallest building. After Irving Trust was acquired by the Bank of New York (BNY) in 1988, 1 Wall Street served as the global headquarters of BNY and its successor BNY Mellon through 2015. After the developer Harry Macklowe purchased the building, he renovated it from 2018 to 2023, converting the interior to residential units with some commercial space. The building is one of New York City's Art Deco landmarks, although architectural critics initially ignored it in favor of such buildings as the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. The exterior of the building's original section was designated as a city landmark in 2001, and the Red Room's interior was similarly designated in 2024. In addition, the structure is a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places district created in 2007. ## Site 1 Wall Street occupies an entire city block in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City, United States. The site is bounded by Broadway to the west, Wall Street to the north, New Street to the east, and Exchange Place to the south. 1 Wall Street is adjacent to the Adams Express Building, 65 Broadway, the Empire Building, Trinity Church, and Trinity Church's churchyard to the west; the American Surety Company Building to the north; 14 Wall Street to the northeast; the New York Stock Exchange Building to the east; and 52 Broadway to the south. Entrances to the New York City Subway's Wall Street station, served by the , are adjacent to the building. Because of the curves in the facade, the original structure does not completely occupy its full land lot; instead, 180 square feet (17 m²) is used as a sidewalk. At the chamfered corners of the building, the facade is recessed as much as 7.5 feet (2.3 m) from the lot line. Under municipal law, any private land that was adjacent to public property (but not clearly marked as such) would eventually revert to the government of New York City. Consequently, when 1 Wall Street was built, its main occupant Irving Trust embedded small metal plaques to delineate the boundaries of its lot, thereby preventing the city government from seizing the land. ## Architecture The original building was designed by Ralph Walker of the Voorhees, Gmelin and Walker in the Art Deco style. The annex was designed by Voorhees, Gmelin and Walker's successor firm Voorhees, Walker, Smith, Smith & Haines. Everett Meeks, the dean of the Yale School of Art, was the original building's design consultant. The original building reaches 50 stories and stands 654 feet (199 m) tall. The southern annex was originally 28 stories tall with a height of about 391 feet (119 m), but it was expanded in 2019 to 36 stories with a height of about 494 feet (151 m). SLCE Architects designed the building's residential conversion in the late 2010s and early 2020s, including the addition to the southern annex. Dormer structures of up to two stories are located on the tops of both sections. Although author Daniel Abramson said 1 Wall Street was "Art Deco in many respects", historian Anthony Robins characterized the building as being "Gothic Modern—a skyscraper reflection of Trinity Church". Walker had designed other Art Deco buildings in the New York City area, mainly telecommunications structures. These included the Barclay–Vesey Building (1927), New Jersey Bell Headquarters Building (1929), 60 Hudson Street (1930), and 32 Avenue of the Americas (1932), as well as telephone buildings in upstate New York. Architectural writer Robert A. M. Stern characterized 1 Wall Street as "Walker's only completed skyscraper". ### Form and facade 1 Wall Street's facade is made primarily of limestone. This contrasts with the brick facades of Walker's telecommunications buildings, the use of which was likely influenced by Dutch and German Expressionism. At the time of 1 Wall Street's construction, limestone was a relatively expensive material and was rarely used for a building's entire facade, with cheaper brick being used instead. 1 Wall Street also contains numerous setbacks on its exterior. Though setbacks in New York City skyscrapers were mandated by the 1916 Zoning Resolution to allow light and air to reach the streets below, they later became a defining feature of the Art Deco style. The facade has uninterrupted vertical piers, similar to other Art Deco buildings. Although the piers emphasize the building's height, Walker said this effect was not the main goal of his design. #### Original building The original 1931 building is on the northern portion of the site. The first twenty stories occupy almost the entire site. The building has a series of small setbacks starting at the 21st story and continuing until the 35th story, above which a slender tower rises. The setbacks on the Broadway and Wall Street elevations alternate with each other. The southern portion of the original building rises as high as a dormer on the 37th floor; the 36th floor is the highest that also connects to the annex. The original structure measures 179 feet (55 m) on Broadway by 102 feet (31 m) on Wall Street. The tower stories, from the 37th to the 48th floors, measure 60 by 80 feet (18 by 24 m) each. The top two stories constituted an executive penthouse. Walker's design emphasized the decorative details of the building's facade; by contrast, other early-20th-century skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan had emphasized the massing. The facade includes indented vertical bays with fluting, which are arranged like curtains, although the facade could also resemble a cliff-like natural shape from different angles. Walker said the building would "have 200 thousand people looking at it from all sides" in a single year, including workers and pedestrians, and he wanted them to have "mental relief and pleasure" when viewing it. Walker also said he "tried to superimpose one rhythm upon a basic rhythm"; as such, he treated the facade as a series of "rhythmic motifs" in different sizes. The resulting concave bays were angled inward at a pitch of 1:9. Each of the bays is separated by curved, projecting piers that rise to each setback. Several piers also have vertical incisions for emphasis. The windows of the original building contained custom curved frames to fit into the facade, which added $40,000 to the construction cost. The base of the original building is composed of the lowest three stories. The section of the base along Wall Street is eight bays wide, with a double-width entrance in the middle of the Wall Street facade, which is reached by a short flight of stairs and leads to the main lobby. The entryway is framed by a jagged portal. The sections of the base on Broadway and New Street are seventeen bays wide. On the New Street elevation, the name "Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker" is printed in cursive script. There is an exposed granite basement on New Street with a service entrance. On the upper floors, each of the bays has a single sash window on each floor. The northwestern and northeastern corners of the building are both chamfered, which respectively connect the western and eastern elevations of the facade with the northern elevation. #### Annex The southern annex, completed in 1965, is also mostly made of limestone. On the New Street side, there are setbacks above the 5th and 10th floors; the building then rises as a slender slab with setbacks on the 29th, 34th, and 35th floors. Along Broadway, the facade of the annex was originally recessed behind that of the original building by two bays. In 2018, a glass-clad entrance to the retail space was constructed in front of the annex. The entrance structure ranges between one and seven stories high. The facade of the 2018 addition projects forward to the facade of the original structure. Eight stories were also built atop the initial portion of the annex. In total, according to zoning documents, the annex measures 180 feet (55 m) on Broadway and 132.5 feet (40.4 m) on Exchange Place. ### Features The building contains 10 elevators as of 2019, compared with 43 elevators and 14 escalators prior to the building's residential conversion. When built, 1 Wall Street had 29 elevators, some of which were near the building's exterior walls. Irving Trust had six private elevators accessed from Wall Street. There were three groups of elevators in the rest of the building, serving the lower, intermediate, or upper floors; these elevators could be reached from Broadway, New Street, or the subway. Because the New Street side of the building was lower than the Broadway side, engineers configured the original elevator shafts so that double-deck elevators could be installed if necessary, but these double-deck elevators were never built. At its completion, 1 Wall Street was the first office structure in Lower Manhattan to use alternating current for electric power. It included a network of pneumatic tubes for sending documents between floors. When 1 Wall Street was converted to residential use, all of the elevators were moved to the center of the building. There is 1,165,645 sq ft (108,292 m²) of interior space, of which the original building had 500,000 square feet (46,000 m²) of floor space. The original building's first through 21st stories each spanned 15,000 square feet (1,400 m²). There are also five basement levels under the original structure, three of which are below sea level. A corridor inside 1 Wall Street's basement, stretching between Broadway and New Street, provided access to the northbound platform of the Wall Street station, but it had been converted to a communications room by 2000. Upon the building's opening, Irving Trust occupied the basements, lowest ten floors, and uppermost three floors. Following its residential conversion, 1 Wall Street contained 678,000 square feet (63,000 m²) of residential space and 166,000 square feet (15,400 m²) of commercial space. The top stories of the annex (completed in 2023) were largely built as voided slabs; hollow plastic spheres were embedded into the concrete floor slabs to reduce the slabs' weight. The glass retail addition is cantilevered outward from the original annex, avoiding the need to drill into the Wall Street subway station, which is located directly underneath the retail addition. #### Red Room and lobby At ground level is the Red Room. Walker and his associate Perry Coke Smith designed the room, while artist Hildreth Meière was hired as a "color consultant". The space was intended mainly as a reception room for the bank and was accessed primarily from Wall Street to the north. The Red Room had no tellers' counters since Irving Trust was a commercial bank, rather than a savings bank. Lewis Pierson of Irving Trust described the Red Room as a place "where we shall meet our customers and friends". Unlike earlier banking rooms such as those in the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building and National City Bank Building, the Red Room did not contain classical-style decorations. The Red Room measures 100 feet (30 m) long from west to east and 40 feet (12 m) wide from north to south. The ceiling is variously cited as measuring 30 feet (9.1 m), 33 feet (10 m), or 37 feet (11 m) high. The room is shaped like an oblong polygon, and there are few right angles within the space. On the north wall is a bronze-clad entrance vestibule, while on the south wall are frosted double glass doors leading to the elevator foyer. There are arched windows on the eastern and western walls, as well as doors on the northern and southern walls. Each of the windows to the east and west has a deep sill, and there are also lancet windows on either side of the entrance to the north. There are radiators with ornate bronze grilles beneath each window. When Irving Trust occupied the building, the Red Room had some chairs and desks. The brokers' loan officers had desks next to the eastern wall, while the officers of Irving Trust's city office sat at desks near the western wall. Because the building was completed just after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Red Room's design included ornate materials to attract customers. The floor is made of red terrazzo tiles. Walker and Smith personally supervised the creation of the floor tiles in Berlin. The walls and ceilings are decorated with 8,911 square feet (827.9 m²) or 13,000 square feet (1,200 m²) of mosaics, which were designed by Meière and manufactured by the Ravenna Mosaic Company in Long Island City and Berlin. The color scheme of the mosaic ranges from red-on-blue on the walls to gold-on-black on the ceiling. The tiles gradually become lighter on the upper portions of the walls, drawing visitors' attention toward the ceiling. The mosaic also contains abstract gold patterns. The rest of the walls is made of Pyrenees black marble, and the columns are made of Verona red marble, similar to a design used in the Stockholm City Hall. The two columns are placed on an east-west axis and have bronze capitals. At the northern and southern ends of the room, the ceiling slants slightly upward. South of the entrance is a foyer that runs between Broadway and New Street, with two polygonal piers. The foyer in turn connected directly to the building's elevators. The Broadway and New Street lobby had walls made of Pyrenees black marble. The ceiling also had an allegorical painting measuring 20 by 66 feet (6.1 by 20.1 m), depicting the influence of wealth on the creation of beauty. Meière and Kimon Nicolaïdes designed the painting. When the annex was built, the expanded lobby floor was clad in travertine, and the original lobby's ceiling was covered with a dropped ceiling. #### Upper floors As with other early-20th-century skyscrapers in the Financial District, the lower stories had large floor areas for the building's primary tenant, Irving Trust, while the upper stories were smaller. The lowest 21 floors each spanned about 15,000 square feet (1,400 m²). Irving Trust occupied the first ten stories, using their large floor areas to house its clerical staff. The second floor originally contained Irving Trust's Wall Street office, which served businesses in the Financial District. The third floor was for the bank's corporate and personal trust divisions. The fifth floor had the bank's executive offices, wainscoted with wood from around the world, while the sixth floor accommodated the out-of-town and foreign divisions and a telephone room for long-distance calls. The 10th through 45th floors were rented to outside tenants. Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker were not responsible for the layout of the offices, instead hiring specialists for that task. Architectural firms also designed some of the offices; for example, the Fiduciary Trust Company's 30th-story offices were designed by Delano and Aldrich, while the offices on the 31st story were designed by Cross & Cross. Generally, law firms and financial firms leased entire stories for themselves. These included brokerage house Bear Stearns, which hired H. J. Horvath & Company and designer W. A. Zwicke to subdivide its 10th-floor space into various offices and other rooms. Irving Trust's dining room was on the 46th floor. The directors' room, on the 47th floor, was decorated with 18-foot-high (5.5 m) wooden wainscoting, and there were directors' chairs arranged in a semicircle. The stories above it had dining spaces and a three-story observation lounge; these spaces had Art Deco furnishings. The executive lounge, at the 49th story, had a ceiling made of gold-leaf seashells, as well as walls covered with multicolored patterned fabrics. The executive lounge also had a triple-height ceiling, fluted walls, teak floors, and a fireplace, as well as four full-height windows that faced each of the cardinal directions. The walls were also decorated with depictions of Native American war bonnets. Since 1 Wall Street's residential conversion, there have been 566 condominium apartments, of which 304 are studios and one-bedroom units. Forty-seven of the condominiums have private decks. The condominiums were designed by SLCE Architects. The upper three floors were converted into a three-story penthouse apartment with 12,965 square feet (1,204.5 m²), four bedrooms and four bathrooms, as well as a private library and chef's kitchen. Several of the units are model apartments, which are shown to prospective buyers and were designed by FrenchCalifornia, Elizabeth Graziolo, and Cyril Vergniol. The amenities include a 75-foot (23 m) indoor swimming pool, 39th-floor observation deck, library, golf simulator, dog spa, and playroom, as well as a lounge and a private restaurant. The building also contains communal spaces with kitchens, phone booths, AV equipment, and printers. These amenities are mostly clustered in the annex, occupying the 38th and 39th floors. Lifetime Fitness operates an athletic club within the building, and there is also a coworking space known as One Works. #### Vault Irving Trust's bank vault, weighing 5,000 short tons (4,500 long tons; 4,500 t), was located 69 to 72 feet (21 to 22 m) below ground level. At the time of the building's 1931 completion, the vault was the second-largest in the city and third-largest in the world, behind those of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Building and the Bank of England. The vault was encased on three sides by a 6-foot-thick (1.8 m) wall composed of iron, steel, and concrete; the fourth side was composed of 3 feet (0.91 m) of concrete and a thick layer of metal. The vault had three stories, of which the top level was used by safe-deposit customers, and the lower floors stored Irving Trust's own fortunes. Each story had 2,700 square feet (250 m²) of space. There were six vault doors, each measuring 30 inches (760 mm) thick; the doors were laced with chemicals that reportedly emitted "paralyzing fumes" if a robber tried to open the door using a blowtorch. The two main doors on the upper level, and one door on each of the other levels, weighed 45 short tons (40 long tons; 41 t) each. A tank of water, as well as chemical, electrical, and mechanical systems, were used to deter break-ins. ## History ### Previous structures #### Northern portion Since the settlement of New Amsterdam in the 17th century, only three buildings on the northern portion of the current skyscraper's site had carried the address 1 Wall Street. The first was a 17th-century stone house, and the second was built in the 19th century. The third such structure was an 18-story office building built in 1907 and designed by St. Louis-based firm Barnett, Haynes & Barnett. The structure was known as the "Chimney Building" or the chimney corner' building", and its footprint measured only 29 by 39 feet (8.8 by 11.9 m). The Chimney Building was developed by a syndicate from St. Louis, headed by Festus Wade of the St. Louis Mercantile Trust Company. In mid-1905, the company paid $700,000 for the 1,131-square-foot (105.1 m²) plot, or an average of $576 per square foot ($6,200/m²). The next year, the syndicate announced that it would start erecting an 18-story structure at 1 Wall Street. The Chimney Building was completed in 1907, and for years afterward, its site was the world's most valuable. Adjoining the Chimney Building were between three and five other structures, ranging from approximately 10 to 20 stories high. The oldest of these was the Union Trust Building, which was erected in 1889 and had 8-foot-thick (2.4 m) masonry walls because engineers of the time did not know how much steel the building required. One of the twelve-story structures surrounded the Chimney Building, and in 1926, this structure and the Chimney Building were sold to a syndicate of bankers. The writer Washington Irving, the namesake of the Irving Trust Company, had occupied a house at 3 Wall Street several years before the building's development. #### Southern portion The southern half of the block had two structures: the Manhattan Life Insurance Building on the north and the Knickerbocker Trust Company Building to the south. The 18-story Manhattan Life Building, completed in 1894, was in the middle of the block, at 64 Broadway. That structure was slightly extended north in 1904 to encompass all lots between 64 and 70 Broadway. The Knickerbocker Trust Company bought the land immediately south of the Manhattan Life Building in early 1906, and finalized building plans the next year. The 22-story Knickerbocker Trust building at 60 Broadway was completed in 1909 and contained a ground-floor banking room, a private penthouse restaurant, and eight elevators. There was a 23-foot-wide (7.0 m) space between the Manhattan Life and Knickerbocker Trust buildings. A 10-inch (0.3 m) strip of land on the northern side of the gap was sold to John E. Schermerhorn in 1912. The Schermerhorn family subsequently built an eight-story taxpayer building at 62 Broadway, within the 23-foot-10-inch-wide (7.3 m) gap. ### Development The idea for the current skyscraper was attributed to Irving Trust president Harry Ward. Since its founding in 1851, Irving Trust had merged with numerous other banks in preceding years, and the firm had outgrown its offices, which were scattered across 60 Broadway, the Equitable Building, and the Woolworth Building. When the building was proposed, the bank was known as American Exchange Irving Trust, having merged in 1926 with the American Exchange-Pacific National Bank. During the mid- and late-1920s, many Art Deco office buildings were constructed in New York City, peaking around 1929 and 1930. Additionally, banks in Manhattan were clustering around Wall Street, and the corner of Broadway and Wall Street was seen as a valuable location. #### Planning By April 1928, the Central Union Trust Company controlled the buildings from 64 to 80 Broadway, and reportedly planned to build a 36-story structure at the site of the Chimney Building. The following month, American Exchange Irving Trust bought the Chimney Building along with three adjacent structures at 7 Wall Street, and 74 and 80 Broadway, in exchange for $5.5 million in cash and a $9 million mortgage. The transaction cost approximately $725 per square foot ($7,800/m²). Following the sale, the Central Union Trust Company moved to the Manhattan Life Building and modified the structures at 60, 62, and 70 Broadway. Immediately after the purchase, Irving Trust announced it would erect an office building on the site. This announcement occurred amid an increase in the number of large banks in New York City. The company's board of directors founded a sub-committee for construction oversight, and several Irving Trust employees formed the One Wall Street Unit to coordinate logistical planning for the new skyscraper. Thirty-five potential architects were identified and interviewed extensively. Ultimately, in June 1928, Voorhees, Gmelin and Walker were hired to design the structure, and Marc Eidlitz was hired as builder. Voorhees, Gmelin and Walker filed plans with the Manhattan Bureau of Buildings the next month. The initial plans, known as Scheme B1, called for a 46- or 52-story building on a plot of 178 by 101 feet (54 by 31 m); they called for two banking rooms at ground level. Walker and his associate Perry Coke Smith designed a large banking room called the Red Room for the lower stories, and Walker hired Hildreth Meière to design the mosaics for the Red Room. Smith and Meière collaborated on the Red Room's color scheme, while Lynn Fausett helped draw out the designs for the room. An August 1928 memorandum between the architects and Irving Trust prompted several changes to the plans. Among those were separate elevators for bank employees and rental tenants; the removal of retail spaces and luncheon clubs; and the addition of a common reception lobby. In October 1928, local newspapers reported that Irving Trust had accepted "final plans" for a 44-story building rising 560 feet (170 m). This design resembled the current structure, with setbacks and a curving facade. The actual final plans, filed in June 1929, provided for a 50-story structure. The 1929 plans were released after Irving Trust applied for, and received, a zoning variance that allowed the base's first setback to be higher than would normally be allowed. The variance also allowed for a shallower setback, and the tower was allowed to cover more than 25 percent of the lot, the maximum lot coverage ratio typically allowed under the 1916 Zoning Resolution. #### Construction Construction on the site of 1 Wall Street began in May 1929, with the demolition of the four buildings on the northern portion of the site. Several engineering professors from Columbia University were hired as consultants for the demolition process. Work was complicated by the fact that one of the previous buildings on the site had extremely sturdy walls ranging from 4 to 10 feet (1.2 to 3.0 m) thick. The Indiana Limestone Company was hired to supply the building's Indiana limestone. During December 1929, Ward sent engraved letters to 500 nearby property owners, apologizing for the noise created during the riveting process; this generated positive publicity for the building in both the local and national press. The ceremonial cornerstone was laid on January 15, 1930. During the construction process, nearby structures such as Trinity Church were shored up. That March, Irving Trust signed an agreement with the Interborough Rapid Transit Company—at the time, one of the operators of the city's subway system—to build three new entrances to the Wall Street station on Broadway and another entrance in 1 Wall Street's basement. Excavations began in July 1930, and work on the building itself began that August. The frame involved the installation of 250,000 rivets and was completed within five months of the groundbreaking without any serious incidents. The Ravenna Mosaic Company was hired to manufacture mosaics for the Red Room, and six workers from a mosaic-tile labor union helped Ravenna's workers install the mosaics. When the steel frame topped out on May 12, 1930, workers hoisted an evergreen tree to the top of the frame. While the workers were securing the final rivets, a hot steel rivet fell from the building's top and hit a truck below, narrowly missing the truck driver's head and causing a small fire on the street. The exterior was completed by August 1930. Several hundred boxcars were used to transport the building's Indiana limestone to New York City; according to railroad workers, it was the largest-ever such order. Before being used in the building, the limestone blocks went to a workshop in Long Island City, where they were carved to meet the building's specifications. ### Irving Trust use By December 1930, Irving Trust announced that 80 percent of the space had been leased in the nearly-completed building. Tenants started moving into 1 Wall Street by mid-March 1931, before its formal opening, at which point it was 85 percent occupied. Among the tenants were several members of the New York Stock Exchange and Curb Exchange. The Irving Trust Company moved into the building on March 23, 1931. Two hundred guards armed with machine guns moved the bank's $8 billion holdings from its former location at the Woolworth Building. The same day, 1 Wall Street opened to public use, with thousands of visitors. By that time, the building was 90 percent occupied. Shortly afterward, the Fiduciary Trust Company of New York moved its banking quarters to the 30th floor, making that space the highest banking quarters in New York City. In a 1938 incident, an electrical transformer on the 21st-story setback blew up; though the windows shook, nobody was injured. An air-conditioning system was installed at 1 Wall Street in 1953, which was one of the largest air-conditioning retrofits ever undertaken in the New York City area at the time. The original building soon became too small to accommodate the operations of Irving Trust and its tenants. Accordingly, in 1961, Irving Trust purchased the three buildings at 60, 62, and 70 Broadway from Hanover Bank, thereby giving Irving Trust control of the entire block between Broadway, Wall Street, New Street, and Exchange Place. The company initially anticipated that the annex would cost $25 million. Voorhees, Walker, Smith, Smith & Haines were hired to design the annex, while Turner Construction was hired as the main contractor. By mid-1963, the site had been cleared; in advance of the work, Irving Trust subleased space at 2 Broadway. To finance construction, Irving Trust sold the building to a subsidiary, which then sold $30 million of secured notes to investors. Renovations also took place in the original building; tenants continued to use 1 Wall Street during construction, but the vault in the basement was emptied. A refrigeration plant was installed on the annex's roof to provide air-conditioning to both buildings, and cooling machinery was also installed in the basement. The project was finished by late 1965. By 1980, Irving Trust had decided to relocate its operations center to another building near the World Trade Center. Between 1987 and 1988, Irving Trust was negotiating to merge with the Bank of New York (BNY), which at the time was headquartered nearby at 48 Wall Street. Irving Trust initially rejected buy-out offers from BNY because the latter had "undervalued" Irving Trust's assets such as 1 Wall Street. By October 1988, with a merger imminent, Irving Trust placed 1 Wall Street for auction; at the time, the building was valued at $250 million. BNY acquired Irving Trust in December 1988. BNY decided to sell its old headquarters at 48 Wall Street and relocate its headquarters to 1 Wall Street. BNY (renamed BNY Mellon in 2007) opened a museum on the 10th floor in 1998, which was dedicated to the history of both banks. During the same time, BNY hired Hoffmann Architects to conduct mortar repair and window replacements. While 1 Wall Street was not damaged following the September 11 attacks at the nearby World Trade Center in 2001, BNY's operations were disrupted, and 1 Wall Street had to be cleaned up. ### Sale and conversion By January 2014, BNY Mellon was looking to sell its headquarters, as it was moving to a location with less space. In May 2014, BNY Mellon sold the building to a joint venture led by Harry B. Macklowe's Macklowe Properties for $585 million, though BNY Mellon continued to occupy the building until September 2015. Macklowe wanted to add up to 174,000 square feet (16,200 m²) of retail space at the base. #### Renovation Macklowe initially planned to make 1 Wall Street a mixed-use residential and office building, and he wanted to rent out 65 percent of the residences. In early 2017, Macklowe announced that the building would be almost entirely residential condominiums, since an all-residential building, owned by its tenants, would require less debt. Macklowe Properties partnered with former Prime Minister of Qatar Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani in a bid to convert the office property into 566 condos with retail at the base. The renovation was originally supposed to be designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, who were replaced by SLCE Architects. Ashe Leandro, Deborah Berke Partners, and Moed de Armas and Shannon also redesigned parts of the building, and Deutsche Bank provided a $750 million mortgage loan for the conversion. At the time, the project was the largest conversion of office space to residential space in New York City, covering nearly 1.2 million square feet (110,000 m²). As part of the renovation, 34 elevators and 16 escalators were removed. The original layout of the building included elevators near the perimeter wall, but this took up usable space near windows. As such, Macklowe removed 20 of the elevators that served upper floors and added 10 new elevators in the building core; new stairs were also constructed to replace the existing stairs. The demolition of the interior was completed in November 2018. The Red Room was restored between 2016 and 2018, in advance of its conversion into a retail space. The Red Room's restoration used tiles that had been placed in storage and unused when the building was originally erected. The facade was restored using stone from the quarry that had supplied the material for Walker's original building. Eight stories were added to the southern annex, and the third floor was demolished to make a higher ceiling for the retail space. A new entrance was also constructed on Broadway, with a design based on one of Walker's unrealized plans for the building. Whole Foods Market leased a 44,000-square-foot (4,100 m²) storefront in 2016, and Life Time Fitness signed a 74,000-square-foot (6,900 m²) lease for a gym on the lowest four floors in 2019. Macklowe originally hired Core Real Estate to market the apartments. However, he replaced Core with Compass, Inc., in December 2020, prompting Core to sue Macklowe for unpaid brokerage fees. Sales of residential units were launched in September 2021. By March 2022, Macklowe and Al Thani planned to refinance 1 Wall Street for $1.1 billion, using the proceeds to pay off construction costs and outstanding debt. At that point, the renovation was projected to be completed by the end of 2022. French retailer Printemps announced that September that it would open a store at 1 Wall Street, covering 55,000 square feet (5,100 m²) on two floors. The Printemps store, which is planned to open in early 2025, will use the Red Room. #### Post-renovation and sales struggles The Whole Foods store at the building's base opened in January 2023. The first residents were scheduled to move into the building that March, and construction was officially completed that month. Macklowe received a $300 million inventory loan for the building in October 2023 after sales underperformed expectations. At the time, there were 479 unsold units out of 566 total apartments, and the project had cost $2.9 billion to date. Sales remained lower than expected; by February 2024, only about 100 apartments had been sold. Asian investors comprised about half of the condominium owners by that year, but such sales were slowing down due to new export controls in China. Industry experts consulted by The Real Deal cited two other reasons for the lagging sales: the condos were overpriced compared to similar units nearby, and there was a general oversupply of vacant residential units in the Financial District. In May 2024, Macklowe replaced the sales agents from Compass, Inc., with two brokers from Macklowe Properties. ## Impact ### Critical reception 1 Wall Street received an accolade from the Broadway Association in 1931; the association designated the building as the "most worthy of civic endorsement" out of all structures erected around Broadway in 1930. A writer for the New York Evening Post called Meière's lobby mural "one of the most costly and beautiful pieces of mural decoration ever attempted in the United States". Eugene Clute of Metal Arts magazine described the walls as "a rich, free-hanging fabric" and "a cage set within the frame of the building and finished with a lining that has no more structural significance than the lining of my lady's work basket". Architectural critics of the mid-20th century generally ignored the building in favor of more widely renowned structures, such as the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and 40 Wall Street. Lewis Mumford criticized 1 Wall Street's facade for not accurately representing its internal design, saying: "Chaste though that exterior is, it is mere swank, and unconvincing swank at that". Because of Irving Trust's role as a receiver for bankrupt companies, 1 Wall Street was called the "Central Repair Shop for Broken Businesses". Architectural historian Robert A. M. Stern wrote in his 1987 book New York 1930 that 1 Wall Street's proximity to other skyscrapers including 70 Pine Street, 20 Exchange Place, 40 Wall Street, and the Downtown Athletic Club "had reduced the previous generation of skyscrapers to the status of foothills in a new mountain range". Daniel Abramson wrote in 2001 that the "corner and tower treatments appear blocky and conventional" compared to 70 Pine Street, though 1 Wall Street was still distinguished in its massing and the curves in its facade. Later architectural critics also praised the structure Ada Louise Huxtable of The New York Times wrote in 1975 that 1 Wall Street was an "Art Deco masterpiece". In a 2001 analysis, the Times characterized the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and 1 Wall Street as three great Art Deco buildings in New York City. Stern stated that in 1 Wall Street's design, "structure became an unseen prop for poetry"; he further called the building's form "a natural precipice of stone shaped by erosion". Architectural writer Eric P. Nash called 1 Wall Street "one of the most delicate, even feminine, skyscrapers ever built". After the building's residential conversion was completed in 2023, a Daily Beast reporter wrote that the structure's conversion could be a model for other office-to-residence conversions, and Adriane Quinlan of Curbed described the building as a contrast to Macklowe's ultra-luxury tower at 432 Park Avenue. Ian Volner, writing for Curbed in 2024, described the Red Room as "an over-the-top dream of period pizzazz that makes Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby look like a work of sober realism". ### Landmark designations In 2001, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated the original portion of 1 Wall Street as an official city landmark. The designation only included the exterior of the original building and did not extend to the southern annex. The Red Room's interior was not given a separate interior-landmark designation because such designations at the time were reserved for publicly accessible spaces. Since the Red Room could only be used by BNY Mellon workers at the time of the exterior designation, the LPC considered it to be closed to the public. The LPC agreed in December 2023 to hold hearings on whether to designate the Red Room's interior as a landmark, and the Red Room was designated as an interior landmark on June 25, 2024. As a result of the exterior landmark designation's limited scope, most of the modifications made during the 2010s condominium conversion, such as the glass retail addition, were made to the annex. Changes to designated landmarks required the commission's approval, but the annex was out of the commission's scope. In 2007, the building was designated as a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places district. ## See also - Art Deco architecture of New York City - List of buildings and structures on Broadway in Manhattan - List of tallest buildings in New York City - List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan below 14th Street

Highway 61 Revisited

Highway 61 Revisited is the sixth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on August 30, 1965, by Columbia Records. Dylan continued the musical approach of his previous album Bringing It All Back Home (1965), using rock musicians as his backing band on every track of the album in a further departure from his primarily acoustic folk sound, except for the closing track, the 11-minute ballad "Desolation Row". Critics have focused on the innovative way Dylan combined driving, blues-based music with the subtlety of poetry to create songs that captured the political and cultural climate of contemporary America. Author Michael Gray argued that, in an important sense, the 1960s "started" with this album. Preceded by the hit single "Like a Rolling Stone", the album features songs that Dylan has continued to perform live over his long career, including "Ballad of a Thin Man" and the title track. He named the album after the major American highway which connected his birthplace of Duluth, Minnesota, to southern cities famed for their musical heritage, including St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans, and the Delta blues area of Mississippi. Highway 61 Revisited peaked at No. 3 on the US Billboard Top LPs chart and No. 4 on the UK Albums Chart. Positively received on release, the album has since been described as one of Dylan's best works and among the greatest albums of all time, ranking No. 4 on Rolling Stone's "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2003 and repositioned to No. 18 in the 2020 revision. It was voted No. 26 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000) and was featured in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2010). "Like a Rolling Stone" was a top-10 hit in several countries, and was listed at No. 4 on Rolling Stone'''s "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list in 2021. Two other songs, "Desolation Row" and "Highway 61 Revisited", were listed at No. 187 and No. 373 respectively on the 2010 list. ## Dylan and Highway 61 In his memoir Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan described the kinship he felt with the route that supplied the title of his sixth album: "Highway 61, the main thoroughfare of the country blues, begins about where I began. I always felt like I'd started on it, always had been on it and could go anywhere, even down in to the deep Delta country. It was the same road, full of the same contradictions, the same one-horse towns, the same spiritual ancestors ... It was my place in the universe, always felt like it was in my blood." When he was growing up in the 1950s, U.S. Highway 61 stretched from the Canada–US border in far northeast Minnesota (redesignated in 1991 as MN-61), through Duluth, where Dylan was born, along the Mississippi River down to New Orleans. Along the way, the route passed near the birthplaces and homes of influential musicians such as Muddy Waters, Son House, Elvis Presley and Charley Patton. The "empress of the blues", Bessie Smith, died after sustaining serious injuries in an automobile accident on Highway 61. Critic Mark Polizzotti points out that blues legend Robert Johnson is alleged to have sold his soul to the devil at the highway's crossroads with Route 49. The highway had also been the subject of several blues recordings, notably Roosevelt Sykes' "Highway 61 Blues" (1932) and Mississippi Fred McDowell's "61 Highway" (1964). Dylan said he had to overcome resistance at Columbia Records to give the album its title. He told biographer Robert Shelton: "I wanted to call that album Highway 61 Revisited. Nobody understood it. I had to go up the fucking ladder until finally the word came down and said: 'Let him call it what he wants to call it'." Michael Gray said the album's title represents Dylan's insistence that his songs are rooted in the blues: "Indeed the album title Highway 61 Revisited announces that we are in for a long revisit, since it is such a long, blues-travelled highway. Many bluesmen had been there before [Dylan], all recording versions of a blues called 'Highway 61'." ## Recording ### Background In May 1965, Dylan returned from his tour of England feeling exhausted and dissatisfied with his material. He told journalist Nat Hentoff: "I was going to quit singing. I was very drained" and added, "[i]t's very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don't dig you." As a consequence of his dissatisfaction, Dylan wrote 20 pages of verse he later described as a "long piece of vomit". He reduced this to a song with four verses and a chorus—"Like a Rolling Stone". He told Hentoff that writing and recording the song washed away his dissatisfaction, and restored his enthusiasm for creating music. Describing the experience to Robert Hilburn in 2004, nearly 40 years later, Dylan said: "It's like a ghost is writing a song like that ... You don't know what it means except the ghost picked me to write the song." Highway 61 Revisited was recorded in two blocks of recording sessions that took place in Columbia's Studio A, located on Seventh Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. The first block, June 15 and 16, was produced by Tom Wilson and resulted in the single "Like a Rolling Stone". On July 25, Dylan performed his controversial electric set at the Newport Folk Festival, where some of the crowd booed his performance. Four days after Newport, Dylan returned to the recording studio. From July 29 to August 4, he and his band completed recording Highway 61 Revisited, but under the supervision of a new producer, Bob Johnston. ### Recording sessions, June 15–16 `In the first recording session on June 15 Dylan was backed by Bobby Gregg on drums, Joe Macho, Jr. on bass, Paul Griffin on piano, and Frank Owens on guitar. For lead guitar, the singer recruited Michael Bloomfield of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The musicians began the session by recording a fast version of "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" and the song "Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence", which was omitted from the album. Dylan and the musicians next attempted to record "Like a Rolling Stone"; at this early stage, Dylan's piano dominated the backing, which was in 3/4 time. "Barbed Wire Fence", the fast version of "It Takes a Lot to Laugh", and an early take of "Like a Rolling Stone" were eventually released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.` The musicians returned to Studio A the following day, when they devoted almost the entire session to recording "Like a Rolling Stone". Present on this occasion was Al Kooper, a young musician invited by Wilson to observe, but who wanted to play on the session. Kooper managed to sit in on the session; despite never having played electric organ before, Kooper improvised an organ riff that, critics such as Greil Marcus and Mark Polizzotti have argued, is a crucial element of the recording. The fourth take was ultimately selected as the master, but Dylan and the band recorded eleven more takes. ### Recording sessions, July 29 – August 4 To create the material for Highway 61 Revisited, Dylan spent a month writing in his new home in the Byrdcliffe artists' colony of Woodstock in upstate New York. When he returned to Studio A on July 29, he was backed by the same musicians, except Harvey Brooks replaced Joe Macho on bass and his producer had changed from Tom Wilson to Bob Johnston. `Their first session together was devoted to three songs. After recording several takes each of "Tombstone Blues", "It Takes a Lot to Laugh" and "Positively 4th Street", masters were successfully recorded. "Tombstone Blues" and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh" were included in the final album, but "Positively 4th Street" was issued as a single-only release. At the close of the July 29 session, Dylan attempted to record "Desolation Row", accompanied by Al Kooper on electric guitar and Harvey Brooks on bass. There was no drummer, as the drummer had gone home. This electric version was eventually released in 2005, on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7.` On July 30, Dylan and his band returned to Studio A and recorded three songs. A master take of "From a Buick 6" was recorded and later included on the final album, but most of the session was devoted to "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" Dylan was unsatisfied with the results and set the song aside for a later date; it was eventually re-recorded with the Hawks in October. After Dylan and Kooper spent the weekend in Woodstock writing chord charts for the songs, sessions resumed at Studio A on August 2. "Highway 61 Revisited", "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues", "Queen Jane Approximately", and "Ballad of a Thin Man" were recorded successfully and masters were selected for the album. One final session was held on August 4, again at Studio A. Most of the session was devoted to completing "Desolation Row". Johnston has related that Nashville musician Charlie McCoy was visiting New York, and he invited McCoy to play guitar at the session. According to some sources, seven takes of "Desolation Row" were recorded, and takes six and seven were spliced together for the master recording. The resulting album, Highway 61 Revisited, has been described as "Dylan's first purely 'rock' album", a realization of his wish to leave his old music format behind and move on from his all-acoustic first four albums and half-acoustic, half-electric fifth album, Bringing It All Back Home. Documentary director D. A. Pennebaker, who filmed Dylan on his acoustic UK tour in May 1965, has said: "I didn't know that he was going to leave acoustic. I did know that he was getting a little dragged by it." ## Songs ### Side one #### "Like a Rolling Stone" Highway 61 Revisited opens with "Like a Rolling Stone", which has been described as revolutionary in its combination of electric guitar licks, organ chords, and Dylan's voice, "at once so young and so snarling ... and so cynical". Michael Gray characterized "Like a Rolling Stone" as "a chaotic amalgam of blues, impressionism, allegory, and an intense directness: 'How does it feel?'" Polizzotti says the composition is notable for eschewing traditional themes of popular music, such as romance, instead expressing resentment and a yearning for revenge. It was suggested that Miss Lonely, the song's central character, is based on Edie Sedgwick, a socialite and actress in the Factory scene of pop artist Andy Warhol. Critic Mike Marqusee said the composition was "surely a Dylan cameo", and that its poignancy becomes apparent upon realizing that "it is sung, at least in part, to the singer himself: he's the one 'with no direction home'." "Like A Rolling Stone" reached number two in the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1965, and was a top-10 hit in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. #### "Tombstone Blues" The fast-paced, two-chord blues song "Tombstone Blues", driven by Michael Bloomfield's lead guitar, uses a parade of historical characters—outlaw Belle Starr, biblical temptress Delilah, Jack the Ripper (represented in this song as a successful businessman), John the Baptist (described here as a torturer), and blues singer Ma Rainey who Dylan humorously suggests shared a sleeping bag with composer Beethoven—to sketch an absurdist account of contemporary America. Although other interpretations could be put forth: Where once the creativity embodied in the accomplishments of Ma Rainey and Beethoven flourished, now there is stultification of patriotic martial music. For critics Mark Polizzotti and Andy Gill, the reality behind the song is the then-escalating Vietnam War; both writers hear the "king of the Philistines" who sends his slaves "out to the jungle" as a reference to President Lyndon B. Johnson. #### "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" On July 29, 1965, Dylan and his band resumed recording "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry". Tony Glover, who observed the recording session, has recalled that Dylan re-worked the song at the piano while the other musicians took a lunch break. Critic Sean Egan writes that by slowing down the tempo, Dylan transformed the song from an "insufferably smart-alec number into a slow, tender, sensual anthem". Gill points out that the lyrics reveal the singer's talent for borrowing from old blues numbers, adapting the lines "Don't the clouds look lonesome shining across the sea/ Don't my gal look good when she's coming after me" from "Solid Road" by bluesmen Brownie McGhee and Leroy Carr. #### "From a Buick 6" AllMusic critic Bill Janovitz describes "From a Buick 6" as a "raucous, up-tempo blues", which is played "almost recklessly". The song opens with a snare shot similar to the beginning of "Like a Rolling Stone". Partially based on Sleepy John Estes' 1930 song "Milk Cow Blues", the guitar part is patterned after older blues riffs by Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton and Big Joe Williams. Robert Shelton hears the song as "an earthy tribute to another funky earth-mother", while for Heylin it is close to filler material; he argues that only through the musicians' performance is Dylan able to "convince us he is doing more than just listing the number of ways in which this 'graveyard woman' is both a lifesaver and a death-giver". #### "Ballad of a Thin Man" "Ballad of a Thin Man" is driven by Dylan's piano, which contrasts with "the spooky organ riffs" played by Al Kooper. Marqusee describes the song as one of "the purest songs of protest ever sung", as it looks at the media and its inability to understand both the singer and his work. He writes that the song became the anthem of an in-group, "disgusted by the old, excited by the new ... elated by their discovery of others who shared their feelings", with its refrain "Something is happening here/ But you don't know what it is/ Do you, Mr Jones?" epitomizing the "hip exclusivity" of the burgeoning counterculture. Robert Shelton describes the song's central character, Mr Jones, as "one of Dylan's greatest archetypes", characterizing him as "a Philistine ... superficially educated and well bred but not very smart about the things that count". ### Side two #### "Queen Jane Approximately" Polizzotti, in his study of Highway 61 Revisited, writes that the opening track of Side Two, "Queen Jane Approximately" is in a similar vein to "Like a Rolling Stone", but the song offers "a touch of sympathy and even comfort in place of relentless mockery". The song is structured as a series of ABAB quatrain verses, with each verse followed by a chorus that is simply a repeat of the last line of each verse: "Won't you come see me Queen Jane?". Gill calls this song "the least interesting track" on Highway 61, but praises the piano ascending the scale during the harmonica break as an evocation of "the stifling nature of an upper class existence". Others have speculated that the song is directed at Joan Baez and the folk movement, which Dylan had largely left behind. "Queen Jane Approximately" was released as the B-side of Dylan's "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" single in early 1966. #### "Highway 61 Revisited" Dylan commences the title song of his album, "Highway 61 Revisited", with the words "Oh God said to Abraham, 'Kill me a son'/Abe says, 'Man, you must be puttin' me on'". As Gill has pointed out, Abraham was the name of Dylan's father, which makes the singer the son whom God wants killed. Gill comments that it is befitting that this song, celebrating a highway central to the history of the blues, is a "raucous blues boogie". He notes that the scope of the song broadens to make the highway a road of endless possibilities, peopled by dubious characters and culminating in a promoter who "seriously considers staging World War III out on Highway 61". The song is punctuated by the sound of a siren whistle, credited as "Police Car" to Dylan in the album liner notes. "Highway 61 Revisited" was released as the B-side of his "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" single on November 30, 1965. #### "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" has six verses and no chorus. The lyrics describe a nightmarish experience in Juarez, Mexico, where, in Shelton's words, "our anti-hero stumbles amid sickness, despair, whores and saints." He battles with corrupt authorities, alcohol and drugs before resolving to return to New York City. In this song, critics have heard literary references to Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels. The backing musicians, Bobby Gregg on drums, Mike Bloomfield on electric guitar, and two pianists, Paul Griffin on tack piano and Al Kooper on Hohner Pianet, produce a mood that, for Gill, perfectly complements the "enervated tone" of the lyrics. Heylin notes that Dylan took great care—sixteen takes—to get the effect he was after, with lyrics that subtly "[skirt] the edge of reason". #### "Desolation Row" Dylan concludes Highway 61 Revisited with the sole acoustic exception to his rock album. Gill has characterized "Desolation Row" as "an 11-minute epic of entropy, which takes the form of a Fellini-esque parade of grotesques and oddities featuring a huge cast of iconic characters". These include historical celebrities such as Albert Einstein and Nero, the biblical characters Noah and Cain and Abel, the Shakespearean figures of Ophelia and Romeo, ending with literary titans T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. The song opens with a report that "they're selling postcards of the hanging", and adds "the circus is in town". Polizzotti connects this song with the lynching of three black circus workers in Duluth, Minnesota, which was Dylan's birthplace, and describes "Desolation Row" as a cowboy song, "the 'Home On The Range' of the frightening territory that was mid-sixties America". In the penultimate verse, the passengers on the Titanic are shouting "Which Side Are You On?" Shelton suggests Dylan is asking, "What difference which side you're on if you're sailing on the Titanic?" and is thus satirizing "simpleminded political commitment". ### Outtakes and The Cutting Edge The first non-album outtake from the Highway 61 Revisited sessions to be released was the single "Positively 4th Street", although on an early pressing of the single Columbia used another Highway 61 outtake, "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", by mistake. "Crawl Out Your Window" was subsequently re-recorded with the Hawks in October, and released as a single in November 1965. Columbia accidentally released an alternate take of "From a Buick 6" on an early pressing of Highway 61 Revisited, and this version continued to appear on the Japanese release for several years. Other outtakes officially released between 1991 and 2005 include alternate takes of "Like a Rolling Stone" and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry", and a previously unreleased song, "Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence", on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991, as well as alternate takes of "Desolation Row", "Highway 61 Revisited", "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues", "Tombstone Blues", and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" on The Bootleg Series Volume 7. Excerpts from several different takes of "Like a Rolling Stone" appeared on the Highway 61 Interactive CD-ROM, released in February 1995. In 2015, Dylan released Volume 12 of his Bootleg Series, The Cutting Edge, in three different formats. The 18-disc Collector's Edition was described as including "every note recorded during the 1965–1966 sessions, every alternate take and alternate lyric". The 18 CDs contain every take of every song recorded in the studio during the Highway 61 Revisited sessions, from June 15 to August 4, 1965. The Highway 61 Revisited out-takes from the first recording session in New York, June 15 and 16, 1965 comprise: ten takes of "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry", six takes of "Sitting On A Barbed-Wire Fence", and fifteen takes of "Like A Rolling Stone". Additionally, The Cutting Edge contains four instrumental "stem" tracks, lifted from Take Four which was the released "Master take" of "Like A Rolling Stone": Guitar (Mike Bloomfield); vocal, guitar (Bob Dylan), piano and bass; drums and organ. The tracks from the second recording session in New York, July 29 to August 4, 1965, comprise seven takes of "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry", sixteen takes of "Tombstone Blues", twelve takes of "Positively Fourth Street", five takes of "From A Buick 6", seventeen takes of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", nine takes of "Highway 61 Revisited", sixteen takes of "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues", seven takes of Queen Jane Approximately", and eight takes of "Desolation Row". Describing the process of listening to these many alternative versions, Chris Gerard wrote in PopMatters: "The fact that these versions do not approach the greatness of the final recordings is exactly the point. These are works in progress. It’s a guided tour through the creative process that led to these landmark albums." ## Artwork and packaging The cover artwork was photographed by Daniel Kramer several weeks before the recording sessions. Kramer captured Dylan sitting on the stoop of the apartment of his manager, Albert Grossman, located in Gramercy Park, New York, placing Dylan's friend Bob Neuwirth behind Dylan "to give it extra color". Only the lower half of Neuwirth is visible and he holds a camera. Dylan wears a Triumph motorcycle T-shirt under a blue and purple silk shirt, holding his Ray-Ban sunglasses in his right hand. Photographer Kramer commented in 2010 on the singer's expression: "He's hostile, or it's a hostile moodiness. He's almost challenging me or you or whoever's looking at it: 'What are you gonna do about it, buster?'" As he had on his previous three albums, Dylan contributed his own writing to the back cover of Highway 61 Revisited, in the shape of freeform, surrealist prose: "On the slow train time does not interfere & at the Arabian crossing waits White Heap, the man from the newspaper & behind him the hundred inevitables made of solid rock & stone." One critic has pointed out the close similarity of these notes to the stream of consciousness, experimental novel Tarantula, which Dylan was writing during 1965 and 1966. ## Reception and legacy In the British music press, initial reviews of Highway 61 expressed both bafflement and admiration for the record. New Musical Express critic Allen Evans wrote: "Another set of message songs and story songs sung in that monotonous and tuneless way by Dylan which becomes quite arresting as you listen." The Melody Maker LP review section, by an anonymous critic, commented: "Bob Dylan's sixth LP, like all others, is fairly incomprehensible but nevertheless an absolute knock-out." The English poet Philip Larkin, reviewing the album for The Daily Telegraph, wrote that he found himself "well rewarded" by the record: "Dylan's cawing, derisive voice is probably well suited to his material ... and his guitar adapts itself to rock ('Highway 61') and ballad ('Queen Jane'). There is a marathon 'Desolation Row' which has an enchanting tune and mysterious, possibly half-baked words." In September 1965, the US trade journal Billboard also praised the album, and predicted big sales for it: "Based upon his singles hit 'Like a Rolling Stone', Dylan has a top-of-the-chart-winner in this package of his off-beat, commercial material." The album peaked at number three on the US Billboard Top LPs chart of top albums, and number four on the UK albums charts. In the US, Highway 61 was certificated as a gold record in August 1967, and platinum in August 1997. For Stereo Review in March 1969, Robert Christgau included Highway 61 Revisited in his piece "A Short and Happy History of Rock", comprising his recommended rock "library" of 25 albums. On its merits, he said Dylan showed good taste in accompanying musicians, but his style of rock "had a loose feel, almost tacked on, in contrast to the tight arrangements which had become typical." Despite observing flaws in the music and lyrics, he concluded that both are "great" and "healthy". Of the music's impact up to that point, Christgau added: > When Dylan started writing "poetic" songs in the early Sixties, he inspired a lot of awful verbalizing, but he also inspired a songwriting revival that still flourishes. When he sang rock, he legitimized it in the folk community. The skilled guitarists and demanding fans of that community inevitably raised the quality—if also the pretensions—of the music. Highway 61 Revisited has remained among the most highly acclaimed of Dylan's works. Biographer Anthony Scaduto praises its rich imagery, and describes it as "one of the most brilliant pop records ever made. As rock, it cuts through to the core of the music—a hard driving beat without frills, without self-consciousness." Michael Gray calls Highway 61 "revolutionary and stunning, not just for its energy and panache but in its vision: fusing radical, electrical music ... with lyrics that were light years ahead of anyone else's; Dylan here unites the force of blues-based rock'n'roll with the power of poetry. The whole rock culture, the whole post-Beatle pop-rock world, and so in an important sense the 1960s started here." In the opinion of PopMatters critic Hank Kalet, the album was the most "electrifying" rock and roll record ever and "one of a handful of albums (including the Beatles' Rubber Soul and Revolver) that gave literate rockers the green light to create a kind of intelligent, probing rock music that had not existed before". "This seminal folk-rock classic" showcased "Dylan's seething, not-quite-out-of-control vocal delivery and a rough-and-tumble instrumental attack", as well as his "transformation from a folk singer to a rock and roller", Sam Sutherland wrote in High Fidelity. Music journalist Gary Graff points to Highway 61 Revisited, along with Dylan's next album Blonde on Blonde (1966) and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966), as possible starting points to the album era, as they each constituted "a cohesive and conceptual body of work rather than just some hit singles ... with filler tracks." `Among Dylan's contemporaries, Phil Ochs was impressed by Highway 61, explaining: "It's the kind of music that plants a seed in your mind and then you have to hear it several times. And as you go over it you start to hear more and more things. He's done something that's left the whole field ridiculously in the back of him." In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine described Highway 61 as "one of those albums that changed everything", and placed it at number four in its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time." It maintained the rating in a 2012 revised list, and was re-ranked at number eighteen in 2020. In 2010, the Rolling Stone list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" ranked "Highway 61 Revisited", "Desolation Row" and "Like a Rolling Stone" at number 373, number 187, and number one, respectively. In 2021, "Like a Rolling Stone" was re-ranked at number 4, and "Desolation Row" was re-ranked at number 83. In 2012, The Best 100 Albums of All Time book ranked Highway 61 Revisited as the greatest album of all time. The album was included in a "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings—published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)—and in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. It was voted No. 26 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002.` Most of the songs on Highway 61 Revisited have remained important, in varying degrees, to Dylan's live performances since 1965. According to his website, he has played "Like a Rolling Stone" over 2,000 times, "Highway 61 Revisited" more than 1,700 times, "Ballad of a Thin Man" over 1,000 times, and most of the other songs between 150 and 500 times. The influence of the songs on Highway 61 Revisited can be heard in many cover versions. "Like a Rolling Stone" has been recorded by artists including the Rolling Stones, on their live album Stripped, David Bowie and Mick Ronson on Heaven and Hull, Johnny Winter on Raisin' Cain, and Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival. My Chemical Romance's version of "Desolation Row" was featured in the film Watchmen in 2009. The song has also been covered by the Grateful Dead on their album Postcards of the Hanging''. "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" has been recorded by Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, Nina Simone and Neil Young. The title track was covered by PJ Harvey, Karen O and Billy Joel. ## Track listing All songs are written by Bob Dylan. The timings are for the stereo mix – the mono mix totals nearly 3 minutes less, with most of the difference accounted for by songs 3, 6, and 8. ## Personnel Adapted from the liner notes. - Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano, Acme siren - Mike Bloomfield – electric guitar - Charlie McCoy – guitar ("Desolation Row") - Al Kooper – organ, piano - Paul Griffin – piano, organ - Frank Owens – piano - Harvey Brooks – bass - Russ Savakus – bass guitar, upright bass ("Desolation Row") - Joe Macho, Jr. – bass guitar - Bobby Gregg – drums - Sam Lay – drums ("Highway 61 Revisited") - Bruce Langhorne – tambourine - Production - Bob Johnston – producer - Tom Wilson – producer ("Like a Rolling Stone") - Daniel Kramer, Don Hunstein – photography - Steve Berkowitz – Hybrid SACD reissue production - Greg Calbi – Hybrid SACD reissue remastering ## Charts ## Certifications

Mosaics of Delos

Ancient Greek mosaic art from Delos, Crete

The mosaics of Delos are a significant body of ancient Greek mosaic art. Most of the surviving mosaics from Delos, Greece, an island in the Cyclades, date to the last half of the 2nd century BC and early 1st century BC, during the Hellenistic period and beginning of the Roman period of Greece. Hellenistic mosaics were no longer produced after roughly 69 BC, due to warfare with the Kingdom of Pontus and the subsequently abrupt decline of the island's population and position as a major trading center. Among Hellenistic Greek archaeological sites, Delos contains one of the highest concentrations of surviving mosaic artworks. Approximately half of all surviving tessellated Greek mosaics from the Hellenistic period come from Delos. The paved walkways of Delos range from simple pebble or chip-pavement constructions to elaborate mosaic floors composed of tesserae. Most motifs contain simple geometric patterns, while only a handful utilize the opus tessellatum and opus vermiculatum techniques to create lucid, naturalistic, and richly colored scenes and figures. Mosaics have been found in places of worship, public buildings, and private homes, the latter usually containing either an irregular-shaped floor plan or peristyle central courtyard. Although there are minor traces of Punic-Phoenician and Romano-Italian influence, the Delian mosaics generally conform to the major trends found in Hellenistic art. The same wealthy patrons who commissioned paintings and sculptures at Delos may have also been involved in hiring mosaic artists from abroad. Delian mosaics share characteristics with those in other parts of the Greek world, such as Macedonian mosaics in Pella. They also bear some attributes with Greek painting traditions and often employ a similar black-background technique found in red-figure pottery of the Classical period. Some of the styles and techniques found at Delos are evident in Roman art and mosaics, although contemporary Roman examples from Pompeii, for instance, reveal significant differences in the production and design of mosaics in the western versus eastern Mediterranean. ## Dating Archaeological excavations of Delos by the French School at Athens began in 1872, with initial descriptions of the mosaics published in a report by French archaeologist Jacques Albert Lebègue in 1876. Precisely 354 mosaics from Delos survive and have been studied by French archaeologist Philippe Bruneau. Most date to the late Hellenistic period, contemporaneous with the late Roman Republic (i.e. the last half of the 2nd century BC and early 1st century BC). A handful were dated to the Classical period, with one mosaic attributed to the Imperial Roman era. Bruneau believed that nominally undated pieces, on the basis of their styles, were produced within the same period as the majority of examples, roughly between 133 and 88 BC. In 167 or 166 BC, after the Roman victory in the Third Macedonian War, Rome ceded the island of Delos to the Athenians, who expelled most of the original inhabitants. The Roman destruction of Corinth in 146 BC allowed Delos to at least partially assume the former's role as the premier trading center of Greece. Delos' commercial prosperity, construction activity, and population waned significantly after the island was assaulted by the forces of Mithridates VI of Pontus in 88 and 69 BC, during the Mithridatic Wars with Rome. Despite the invasions by Pontus, the island was only gradually abandoned after Rome secured a more direct trading link with the Orient that marginalized Delos as a pivotal midway point for trade leading to the East. ## Characteristics ### Composition The composition of the Delos mosaics and pavements include simple pebble constructions, chip-pavement made of white marble, ceramic fragments, and pieces of tesserae. The latter falls into two categories: the simpler, tessellated opus tessellatum using large pieces of tesserae, on average eight by eight millimeters, and the finer opus vermiculatum using pieces of tesserae smaller than four by four millimeters. Many Delian mosaics use a mixture of these materials, while chip pavement is the most common. The latter is found in 55 homes and usually reserved for the ground floor. The majority of Delian mosaics comprise broken pieces of marble set into cement floors; other flooring bases are composed of either rammed earth or gneiss flagstones. Pavements in kitchens and latrines were built with pottery, brick, and tile fragments for the purpose of waterproofing. Thin strips of lead set into the cement are often used to distinguish the contours of geometric-patterned mosaics, but are absent in the more complex tessellated, figured mosaics. ### Arrangement and location While some mosaics have been unearthed from religious sanctuaries and public buildings, most of them were found in residential buildings and private homes. The majority of these houses possess an irregular-shaped floor plan, while the second largest group were built with a peristyle central courtyard. Simple mosaics were usually relegated to normal walkways, whereas rooms designated for receiving guests featured more richly decorated mosaics. However, only 25 houses of Delos feature opus tessellatum mosaics and only eight houses possess the opus vermiculatum-style motifs and figured scenes. The vast majority of decorated floors feature only simple geometric patterns. It is also more common for opus vermiculatum and opus tessellatum mosaics to be found in upstairs rooms than on the ground floors of ancient Delian homes. With the exception of the House of Dionysos and House of the Dolphins, the courtyards of peristyle homes in Delos feature only floral and geometric motifs. ### Patterns and motifs Among the various patterns and motifs found in Delian mosaics is the triple-colored lozenge that creates a three-dimensional illusion of cubes in perspective for the viewer. This pattern appears in fifteen different locations, making it one of the most common. Other motifs include waves and stepped triangles, while major themes include maritime, theatrical, natural, or mythological objects and figures. The single wave pattern, a common motif in Hellenistic art, is the most predominant type of border design for mosaics at Delos and can be found at other sites such as Arsameia (albeit arranged in the opposite direction). The rosette motif, which is found in the mosaics of various Hellenistic sites across the Mediterranean, is often coupled with single-wave borders in Delian mosaics. The typical Hellenistic palmette motif is used in a mosaic of Delos to fill the four corners around a central rosette motif. The illusion of three-dimensional relief in the figured scenes of Delian mosaics was usually achieved by the use of polychrome, with white, black, yellow, red, blue and green hues. The origins of the composition, techniques, layout, and style of Delian mosaics can be found in 5th-century BC pebble mosaics of Olynthus in the Chalcidice of northern Greece, with mosaics positioned in the center of cement floors and utilizing garland, meander, and wave patterns around a centralized motif or figured scene. This design scheme is similar to that of 4th-century BC mosaics of Pella in Macedonia, although the pebble mosaics there employ a wider range of colors to create the effects of volume. The transition from pebble mosaics to more complex tessellated mosaics perhaps originated in Hellenistic-Greek Sicily during the 3rd century BC, developed at sites such as Morgantina and Syracuse. Much like Olynthus, mosaics of Morgantina contain the garland, wave, and meander patterns, although the latter was finally executed with perspective. ### Culture and ethnic origins Aside from a symbol of the Punic-Phoenician goddess Tanit, all pavement motifs are typically Hellenistic Greek in origin, although some pavement mortars used with tesserae designs betray some Italian influence. The three major ethnic groups of Delos included Greeks (largely of Athenian origin), Syrians/Phoenicians, and Italians/Romans, but it is very likely that many of these Italians were Italiotes, Greek-speaking natives of Magna Graecia in what is now southern Italy. Delian inhabitants of either Greek, Italian, and Syrian origins owned mosaics in their private households, but Vincent J. Bruno asserts that the designs of their mosaic artworks were indebted entirely to Greek artistic traditions. ## Significance ### The surviving corpus of Hellenistic mosaic art The French archaeologist François Chamoux considered the mosaics of Delos as the "high-water mark" and pinnacle of ancient Greek mosaic art utilizing tesserae to create rich, detailed and colorful scenes. This Hellenistic style of mosaic continued until the end of Antiquity and may have influenced the widespread use of mosaics in the Western world during the Middle Ages. In her study of the households and artworks of Mediterranean trading centers, Birgit Tang analyzed three archaeological sites: Delos in the Aegean, Carthage in what is now modern Tunisia, and Emporion, modern Empúries in Catalonia, Spain, which was once a Greek colony. The reasons for her choosing these sites in particular for investigation and comparison include their status as major maritime trading hubs as well as their relatively well-preserved ruins of urban households. Ruth Westgate writes that Delos contains roughly half of all surviving tessellated Greek mosaics from the Hellenistic period. In her estimation the sites of Delos and Morgantina and Soluntum in Sicily contain the largest amount of surviving evidence for Hellenistic Greek mosaics. Hariclia Brecoulaki asserts that the Delos mosaics represent the single largest collection of Greek mosaics. She also states that only the Macedonian capital of Pella ranks as an equal in having private homes (as opposed to royal residences) decorated with elaborate wall paintings, signed mosaics, and freestanding marble sculptures. Katherine M. D. Dunbabin writes that while many Hellenistic mosaics have been found in mainland Greece, Asia Minor, and northeast Africa (i.e. Cyrene), it is only at the site of Delos where they occur in "sufficient numbers to allow general conclusions about their use and nature." ### Comparisons with Roman Pompeii In her comparative analysis of mosaic art in the Greco-Roman world, Hetty Joyce chose the mosaics of Delos and Roman Pompeii as chief representative samples for determining distinctions in the form, function, and production techniques of mosaics in the Greek East and Latin West. Her reasoning for the selection of these two sites are their well-preserved pavements, the secure dating of the samples to the late 2nd and early 1st centuries BC, and, thanks to the extensive documentation of Delian mosaics by Bruneau, a sufficient amount of academic literature dedicated to each site to form comparisons. Ruth Westgate, in her survey and comparative study of Hellenistic Greek mosaics with mosaics of Pompeii, concludes that the Roman mosaics, dated to the Pompeian First Style of wall painting in the late 2nd and early 1st centuries BC, were derived from the Greek tradition. However, she stresses that Pompeian mosaics departed from their Greek counterparts by almost exclusively featuring figured scenes instead of abstract designs, in plain pavement most likely set by local craftsmen and produced separately from the figured panels, the latter of which were perhaps made by Greek artisans for their Roman patrons. Due to the similarities between the Hellenistic wall paintings at Delos and the First Style of Pompeii, Joyce contends that the differences in Delian and Pompeian mosaics are the deliberate product of artistic preference rather than the result of ignorance of each other's traditions. These differences include the widespread use of opus signinum at Pompeii, with only four known examples at Delos; the use of opus sectile at Pompeii and its complete absence at Delos; the prevalent use of polychrome patterns and intricate, three-dimensional figured designs in Delian mosaics versus two-dimensional designs at Pompeii, which at best utilize two colors. Complex three-dimensional figured mosaics using polychrome designs to achieve the illusion of light and shadow were not produced at Pompeii until the Pompeian Second Style of wall painting (80–20 BC) and are considered an adoption from Hellenistic art trends. While lead strips were used in Hellenistic mosaics of Delos, Athens, and Pella (Greece), Pergamon (Turkey), Callatis (Romania), Alexandria (Egypt), and Chersonesus (the Crimean peninsula), they are absent in Western Mediterranean mosaics of Malta, Sicily, and the Italian peninsula. Westgate affirms that Hellenistic mosaics can be divided into two broad categories: eastern and western, based on their different styles and production techniques. ### Connections to other mediums of ancient Greek art Red-figure pottery was no longer produced by the time the Delos mosaics were made. The black background technique of red-figure pottery was still appreciated in 4th-century-BC Macedonian pebble mosaics from Pella and in mosaics at Delos, such as the white-figured Triton mosaic with tesserae. The black background technique was later used in glass art such as cameo glass, particularly Roman glass (e.g. Portland Vase, Gemma Augustea, Great Cameo of France, etc.). The undulating garland motif against a black background from the masonry-style mural paintings at Delos were earlier featured in Greek works ranging from vases to 4th-century-BC Macedonian mosaics of Pella, particularly the Stag Hunt Mosaic. However, the painters of Delos arguably invented their own decorative genre using a combination of these older elements with new naturalistic coloring. Aside from the black background, mosaics like the Stag Hunt Mosaic were also inspired by the illusionist, three-dimensional qualities of Greek paintings. At Delos, paintings and mosaics inherited the same Classical Greek standards of craftsmanship, lighting, shading, and coloring. Sculptors, painters, and mosaic artists may have all been part of the same system of patronage at Delos, which in some instances would have necessitated the importation of foreign artists. ## Houses and city quarters ### Mosaics from the Northern Quarter The northern quarter of Delos contains the Jewelry Quarter, where older structures such as workshops and other archaeological remains dating to the 3rd century BC and early 2nd century BC have been discovered. By the second half of the 2nd century BC these were replaced by private homes built in the most characteristic fashion for Delos: a narrow, rectangular floor plan with a central courtyard, a vestibule service room in the front, and a larger, main room in the rear. The quarter of the House of the Masks is the only area of Delos without this archetypal house plan. Some houses of the Northern Quarter feature mosaic decorations with mythological scenes, including Lycurgus of Thrace and Ambrosia in an upper-story mosaic, as well as Athena and Hermes together with a seated woman in a main-room mosaic. ### Mosaics from the Theatre Quarter Most houses in the crowded Theatre Quarter of Delos have irregular-shaped floor plans (such as trapezoidal designs), as opposed to square or rectangular designs. The narrow and irregular street grid is unlike that of other quarters, where streets usually meet at approximately right angles. Similar to the majority of excavated homes of Delos, those in the Theatre Quarter feature an open courtyard without porticoes, instead of the peristyle layout with columns. Some of the houses in the Theatre Quarter lack interior decoration altogether, with neither wall murals nor mosaics, which is unusual for most Delian homes. ### House of Dionysos The Delos mosaic of Dionysos riding a tiger in the House of Dionysos is one of the finest examples of opus vermiculatum, according to Dunbabin, and is comparable to the Dionysos riding a leopard from the House of the Masks if not the simpler pebble-mosaic predecessor from the Macedonian capital at Pella. A key thematic difference, however, are the wings of Dionysos that suggest his incarnation as a daimon instead of a god. The tesserae materials, made of glass, faience, terracotta and natural stones, are fashioned into pieces measuring roughly one millimeter square, allowing for sharp detail and an elaborate color scheme. ### House of the Masks The House of the Masks is named after the mosaic motif of theatre masks decorating ivy scrolls arranged in strips around a central surface area decorated in a cubic pattern. The more intricately decorated mosaics are found in four different rooms branching off from the peristyle courtyard paved with marble chips, with corridor mosaics utilizing amphora fragments. In the center of one mosaic is the figure of Dionysos riding a leopard against a similar black background to the mosaic in the House of Dionysos. Another central mosaic features a flute player and a dancing figure, the latter perhaps representing Silenus. Only the Dionysos figure employs the vermiculatum method. The other mosaics of the house fail to achieve the naturalism of finer figure scenes and motifs, but they nevertheless demonstrate an attempt at mimicking their illusionist qualities with the tesselated technique. ### House of the Dolphins The House of the Dolphins contains a peristyle floor mosaic design that is unusual for Delos, with a circle enclosed by a square outline. In each corner of the square are pairs of dolphins ridden by tiny winged figures bearing the emblems of various Greek deities, namely the thyrsus, caduceus, trident, and one object that is missing due to damage. The circle contains a central rosette design surrounded by floral garlands and griffins. The mosaic, signed by a certain Asclepiades of Arados (in ancient Phoenicia, now western Syria), is one of only two examples from Delos that bear a signature of the original artist. ### House of the Lake Similar to the design of the majority of Delian homes, the House of the Lake is an irregular-shaped home (as opposed to a rectangular or square floor plan), located near a sacred lake and inhabited from roughly 300 to 100 BC. The peristyle impluvium is decorated with a geometric-patterned motif around a central rosette, surrounded on all sides by monolithic columns in the Ionic style. ### House of the Trident The House of the Trident contains peristyle panels with the motif of a black dolphin situated around a red anchor and black tridents against a white background. The theme suggests that the owners of the house were somehow connected to maritime pursuits. These simple, two-dimensional mosaics stand in contrast to the multicolored, finely detailed, three-dimensional Hellenistic mosaics of figures and motifs. They are perhaps comparable or even linked to the black-and-white pavement mosaics that appear in Roman Italy some decades later. ## See also - Archaeological Museum of Delos - History of the Cyclades - Byzantine mosaics - Late Antique and medieval mosaics in Italy - Zeugma Mosaic Museum

Gymnopilus maritimus

Species of fungus

Gymnopilus maritimus is a fungus species of the family Hymenogastraceae first collected in northern Sardinia, Italy, in 2006. The species produces moderately sized, sturdy mushrooms of a reddish-orange colour. The cap, which can measure up to 70 millimetres (3 in) across, is covered in orange fibrils, and sometimes has small scales. The yellowish stem measures up to 110 mm (4 in) in length by 8 mm (0.3 in) in width, and sometimes shows remnants of the partial veil. The mushrooms have thick gills of a variable colour, ranging from yellow to rust but staining darker, and the yellow flesh has a mild taste. The mushrooms leave a rusty-brown spore print, while the spores themselves measure from 7.5–11.5 micrometres (0.00030–0.00045 in) in length. The species is most similar in appearance to G. arenophilus and G. fulgens, but can be differentiated from both morphologically. Despite the similarities, it is not closely related to either, suggesting convergent evolution. Instead, within the genus Gymnopilus, it is most closely related to the spectabilis–imperialis clade. However, it is not particularly similar to any of its closest relatives. The species has been found only on coastal sand dunes near Olbia, in Sardinia, where it was observed growing at the base of Juncus maritimus (the sea rush), between the winter months of October and January. However, there is speculation that it may also grow elsewhere in Europe. Mushrooms were seen growing from both the sandy soil and decaying plants; however, as a saprotrophic feeder, it is possible that the species would be able to grow on other substrates. The mushrooms grow in close groups or tight tufts. ## Taxonomy Gymnopilus maritimus was first described by mycologists Laura Guzmán-Dávalos (a specialist in Gymnopilus), Antonio Ortega, Marco Contu and Alfredo Vizzini in 2009 in an article in the journal Mycological Progress. The description was based on several specimens collected during field work by Contu in Sardinia between January 2006 and January 2007; the holotype was collected on 15 January 2006. The discovery has contributed to Sardinia's reputation as an area of mycological significance. The description was later published in Italian by Contu and Vizzini in the journal Micologia e Vegetazione Mediterranea, along with the description of G. purpuresquamulosus, because the original descriptions of both of these species were in English, and difficult for non-specialists to obtain. The specific epithet maritimus refers to the typical habitat of coastal sand dunes, on sandy soil or decomposing Juncus maritimus. The holotype has been deposited in the University of Granada's herbarium. Within the genus Gymnopilus, it is located in the subgenus Gymnopilus and section Macrospori. The subgenus Gymnopilus was proposed by Henri Romagnesi as Cortinatae (while the genus was known as Fulvidula) in 1942, though the name Gymnopilus was given later by Rolf Singer. The subgenus is characterised by mushrooms that feature either no veils, or veils that do not form rings. The section Macrospori, proposed by Guzmán-Dávalos in 1995, is made up of large-spored species with ringless mushrooms. Molecular analysis revealed that G. maritimus forms a sister group to (that is, shares an immediate common ancestor with) the spectabilis–imperialis clade, a clade that includes G. imperialis, G. spectabilis, G. junonius (often considered synonymous with G. spectabilis), G. pampeanus, and others. G. maritimus forms a more inclusive clade along with the members of spectabilis–imperialis; while it produces the smallest fruit bodies, it shares with the other members strong, sturdy mushrooms, caps with fibrils (sometimes with scales) and large, warty spores that turn red in Melzer's reagent or Lugol's iodine. ## Description Gymnopilus maritimus mushrooms have a cap of between 15 and 70 millimetres (0.6 and 3 in) in width that is convex to flattened-convex in shape. There is sometimes a broad umbo, and in older specimens, the cap is depressed in the centre. The margin of the cap is somewhat wavey. The cap surface is dry and dull, coloured red to red-orange, and yellow towards the margin. It is covered in fibrils of an orange colour, and sometimes has minute scales. The dried cap turns blackish-red when potassium hydroxide is applied. The stem is 35 to 110 mm (1 to 4 in) in length by 4 to 8 mm (0.2 to 0.3 in) in width. It is attached centrally to the cap, and is either completely cylindrical, with equal thickness throughout its length, or slightly narrower towards the base, where whitish or cream mycelia are sometimes visible. It is dry, with fibres and furrows. It is a yellowish colour, bruising reddish brown. Traces of the partial veil are sometimes visible on the stem, though it does not form a ring. The yellow (brown at the bottom of the stem) flesh can be up to 15 mm (0.6 in) thick in the cap and does not bruise. It dries dark brown. There is no distinctive odour, and the taste is mild or slightly bitter. The thick gills can be adnate (connected to the stem by the entire depth of the gill) or sinuate (wavy, with the gills becoming shallower than deeper). They are subdistant (neither close nor distant) and swollen in the middle. In colour, they are yellow in the youngest mushrooms, turning an ochre-orange, while the oldest mushrooms they are rust. The gill edges are paler than the faces, and the gills stain orange-brown or darker. No reference is made in the original description to the edibility of the mushrooms. ### Microscopic characteristics Gymnopilus maritimus leaves a rusty-brown spore print. The basidiospores can measure 7.5–11.5 micrometres (0.00030–0.00045 in) in length, though the typical range is 8–10.5 micrometres (0.00031–0.00041 in). In width, they typically measure 5.5–7.5 micrometres (0.00022–0.00030 in), but they can be up to 8 μm wide. In shape, they are ellipsoid or sometimes broadly ellipsoid. The top of the spore (the side where it was once attached to the sterigma, the connection between the basidium and the spore) is rounded and blunt. The spores are covered with fairly large warts, measuring from 0.5–2 micrometres (2.0×10⁻⁵–7.9×10⁻⁵ in) from the main spore in height. There is no germ pore or plage, and there is no clear depression around the hilum (the area where the spore was attached to the sterigma). The spores turn an orange-yellow to orange-brown colour in potassium hydroxide, and turn reddish-brown in Melzer's reagent and in Lugol's iodine, but they are not metachromatic. The four-spored basidia typically measure 24–35 micrometres (0.00094–0.00138 in) in length by 7–9 micrometres (0.00028–0.00035 in) in width, but can be as much as 10.5 μm wide. They are club-shaped, but narrower in the middle. They are hyaline (translucent) and yellow to yellowish brown. The sterigmata are between 1.6 and 7 μm long. The cheilocystidia (cystidia on the edge of the gill) are typically 30 to 42 (though sometimes as much as 50) μm long by 6–10.5 micrometres (0.00024–0.00041 in) wide. They are shaped like a flask or wine-skin. The top of the cell suddenly widens, and the cell as a whole is thin-walled, hyaline and yellowish, and sometimes appears to contain small grains. The caulocystidia (cystidia on the stem) can be found in tufts at the top of the stem, and measure from 24–60 micrometres (0.00094–0.00236 in) by 3–9 micrometres (0.00012–0.00035 in). They are cylindrical, or narrowly flask-shaped, sometimes with a long neck. They are, again, yellow and hyaline. The yellowish hyphae are between 15 and 13.5 μm wide with a wall of variable thickness. There are clamp connections at the septa (the walls dividing individual hypha cells). The flesh in the cap is radial, and is made up of yellowish hyphae of between 2.4 and 20 μm wide. The pileipellis, the outermost layer of hyphae, forms a cutis, and on older specimens (and on the small scales) forms a trichoderm. ### Similar species There are five species similar in appearance to G. maritimus: G. arenophilus, G. decipiens, G. flavus, G. fulgens and G. pseudofulgens. G. arenophilus and particularly G. fulgens are the most similar. Though G. maritimus and G. arenophilus show similarities in their biogeography and ecology, the typically slightly smaller G. arenophilus differs from G. maritimus morphologically. While G. maritimus has a cap covered in fibrils with small scales, G. arenophilus can sometimes be completely smooth, and spore ornamentation differs, with G. maritimus typically displaying larger warts. Like G. maritimus, G. fulgens has been recorded growing on sand-dune heathland; further, the spores are similar in appearance to those of G. maritimus. However, G. fulgens requires soil rich in peat and must grow among moss. Moreover, there are a number of morphological differences; G. maritimus mushrooms are larger and thicker, there are never remains of the partial veil on G. fulgens stems, the shape of the top of the spores differs between the two species, and the cheilocystidia and caulocystidia are significantly larger on G. maritimus. G. fulgens var. luteicystis is even more distinct from G. maritimus than the nominate variety. Despite the similarities between the three species, the three have been shown to be in different clades within Gymnopilus, suggesting ecological convergence between G. arenophilus and G. maritimus, and morphological convergence between G. fulgens and G. maritimus. Gymnopilus flavus, despite also appearing on land near the Mediterranean, can be differentiated from G. maritimus as it lives among grass, especially Dactylis glomerata, and it has distinctly smaller spores, typically measuring 5 to 6 by 3.5 to 4.2 μm. G. pseudofulgens, also collected in Italy, shows two major morphological differences: it produces smaller mushrooms, and spores that are of a different shape with smaller warts. G. decipiens, another species that grows on sandy soil, again has spores that are markedly different. The American species G. arenicola also favours sandy soil, but has significantly smaller spores than G. maritimus. Two other species of Gymnopilus found around the Mediterranean are G. corsicus and G. spadiceus. G. corsicus has no veil remnants on the stem, and spores that do not turn red in Melzer's reagent or Lugol's iodine, and so can easily be differentiated from G. maritimus. G. spadiceus shows several similarities to G. maritimus, but grows only on pine wood and has rectangular spores. Gymnopils maritimus is clearly a different species from other members of its clade, despite their close relation. All other species in the clade grow upon dead wood and have well-developed rings on their stems. The spores also differ; in the case of G. junonius and G. spectabilis (often considered synonymous), as well as G. pampeanus, they are narrower, and in the case of G. imperialis, they are wider. Of the other members of the clade, only G. junonius and G. spectabilis also grow in Europe. ## Habitat and distribution Gymnopilus maritimus is known only from a single site in Pittulongu, an area of Olbia, in Sardinia, Italy, which is the type locality. There, mushrooms were found growing in close groups and tufts on coastal sand dunes around 10 metres (33 ft) from the high tide line. They were observed at the base of live Juncus maritimus (sea rush) plants, growing on sandy soil or decaying plants, where they were feeding as saprotrophs. As such, it is possible that the species would be able to grow on other substrates. They were observed growing from autumn to winter, between the end of October and January. In addition to the collections in Sardinia, Contu and Vizzini speculate that reports of G. fulgens growing in "sand-dune heaths" on Great Britain, an unusual habitat for that species, may in fact show the presence of G. maritimus on the island. ## See also - List of Gymnopilus species

Beagle

Breed of small scent hound

The beagle is a breed of small scent hound, similar in appearance to the much larger foxhound. The beagle was developed primarily for hunting rabbit or hare, known as beagling. Possessing a great sense of smell and superior tracking instincts, the beagle is the primary breed used as a detection dog for prohibited agricultural imports and foodstuffs in quarantine around the world. The beagle is a popular pet due to its size and good temper. The modern breed was developed in Great Britain around the 1830s from several breeds, including the Talbot Hound, the North Country Beagle, the Southern Hound, and possibly the Harrier. Beagles have been depicted in popular culture since Elizabethan times in literature and paintings and more recently in film, television, and comic books. ## History The origin of the beagle is not known. In the 11th century, William the Conqueror brought the St. Hubert Hound and the Talbot hound to Britain. In Britain, both of these strains were then crossed with Greyhounds to give them speed and stamina for deer hunting. Beagles are similar to the Harrier and the extinct Southern Hound, though they are smaller and slower. From the Middle Ages, beagle was used as a generic description for the smaller hounds, though these dogs differed considerably from the modern breed. Miniature breeds of beagle-type dogs were known from the times of Edward II and Henry VII, who both had packs of Glove Beagles, so named since they were small enough to fit on a glove, and Queen Elizabeth I kept a breed known as a Pocket Beagle, which stood 8 to 9 inches (20 to 23 cm) at the shoulder. Small enough to fit in a "pocket" or saddlebag, they rode along on the hunt. The larger hounds would run the prey to ground, then the hunters would release the small dogs to continue the chase through underbrush. Elizabeth I referred to the dogs as her singing beagles and often entertained guests at her royal table by letting her Pocket Beagles cavort amid their plates and cups. 19th-century sources refer to these breeds interchangeably and it is possible that the two names refer to the same small variety. In George Jesse's Researches into the History of the British Dog from 1866, the early 17th-century poet and writer Gervase Markham is quoted referring to the beagle as small enough to sit on a man's hand and to the: > little small mitten-beagle, which may be companion for a ladies kirtle, and in the field will run as cunningly as any hound whatere, only their musick is very small like reeds. By the 18th century, two breeds had been developed for hunting hare and rabbit: the Southern Hound and the North Country Beagle (or Northern Hound). The Southern Hound, a tall, heavy dog with a square head, and long, soft ears, was common from south of the River Trent and probably closely related to the Talbot Hound. Though slow, it had stamina and an excellent scenting ability. The North Country Beagle was bred chiefly in Yorkshire and was common in the northern counties. It was smaller than the Southern Hound, less heavy-set, and with a more pointed muzzle. It was faster than its southern counterpart but its scenting abilities were less well-developed. Standards for the Pocket Beagle were drawn up as late as 1901; these genetic lines are now extinct, although modern breeders have attempted to recreate the variety. ### Development of the modern breed Reverend Phillip Honeywood established a beagle pack in Essex in the 1830s; it is believed that this pack formed the basis for the modern breed. Although details of the pack's lineage are not recorded, it is thought that North Country Beagles and Southern Hounds were strongly represented; William Youatt suspected that Harriers formed a good majority of the beagle's bloodline, but the origin of the Harrier is itself obscure. Honeywood's Beagles were small, standing at about 10 inches (25 cm) at the shoulder, and pure white according to John Mills (writing in The Sportsman's Library in 1845). Prince Albert and Lord Winterton also had Beagle packs around this time, and royal favour no doubt led to some revival of interest in the breed, but Honeywood's pack was regarded as the finest of the three. Although credited with the development of the modern breed, Honeywood concentrated on producing dogs for hunting and it was left to Thomas Johnson to refine the breeding to produce dogs that were both attractive and capable hunters. Two strains were developed: the rough-coated and smooth-coated varieties. The rough-coated beagle survived until the beginning of the 20th century, and there were even records of one making an appearance at a dog show as late as 1969, but this variety is now extinct, having probably been absorbed into the standard beagle bloodline. In the 1840s, a standard beagle type was beginning to develop. The distinction between the North Country Beagle and Southern Hound had been lost, but there was still a large variation in size, character, and reliability among the emerging packs. In 1856, "Stonehenge" (the pseudonym of John Henry Walsh), writing in the Manual of British Rural Sports, was still dividing beagles into four varieties: the medium beagle; the dwarf or lapdog beagle; the fox beagle (a smaller, slower version of the Foxhound); and the rough-coated or terrier beagle, which he classified as a cross between any of the other varieties and one of the Scottish terrier breeds. Stonehenge also gives the start of a standard description: > In size the beagle measures from 10 inches, or even less, to 15. In shape they resemble the old southern hound in miniature, but with more neatness and beauty; and they also resemble that hound in style of hunting. By 1887, the threat of extinction was on the wane: there were 18 beagle packs in England. The Beagle Club was formed in 1890 and the first standard drawn up at the same time. The following year the Association of Masters of Harriers and Beagles was formed. Both organisations aimed to further the best interests of the breed, and both were keen to produce a standard type of Beagle. By 1902, the number of packs had risen to 44. ### Export Beagles were in the United States by the 1840s at the latest, but the first dogs were imported strictly for hunting and were of variable quality. Since Honeywood had only started breeding in the 1830s, it is unlikely these dogs were representative of the modern breed, and the description of them as looking like straight-legged Dachshunds with weak heads has little resemblance to the standard. Serious attempts at establishing a quality bloodline began in the early 1870s when General Richard Rowett from Illinois imported some dogs from England and began breeding. Rowett's Beagles are believed to have formed the models for the first American standard, drawn up by Rowett, L. H. Twadell, and Norman Ellmore in 1887. ## Popularity On its formation, the Association of Masters of Harriers and Beagles took over the running of a regular show at Peterborough that had started in 1889, and the Beagle Club in the UK held its first show in 1896. The regular showing of the breed led to the development of a uniform type, and the Beagle continued to prove a success up until the outbreak of World War I when all shows were suspended. After the war, the breed was again struggling for survival in the UK: the last of the Pocket Beagles was probably lost during this time, and registrations fell to an all-time low. A few breeders (notably Reynalton Kennels) managed to revive interest in the dog and by World War II, the breed was once again doing well. Registrations dropped again after the end of the war but almost immediately recovered. As purebred dogs, Beagles have always been more popular in the United States and Canada than in their native country England. The National Beagle Club of America was formed in 1888 and by 1901 a Beagle had won a Best in Show title. As in the UK, activity during World War I was minimal, but the breed showed a much stronger revival in the U.S. when hostilities ceased. In 1928 it won a number of prizes at the Westminster Kennel Club's show and by 1939 a Beagle – Champion Meadowlark Draughtsman – had captured the title of top-winning American-bred dog for the year. On 12 February 2008, a Beagle, K-Run's Park Me In First (Uno), won the Best In Show category at the Westminster Kennel Club show for the first time in the competition's history. In North America they have been consistently in the top-ten most-popular breeds for over 30 years. From 1953 to 1959 the beagle was ranked No. 1 on the list of the American Kennel Club's registered breeds; in 2005 and 2006 it ranked 5th out of the 155 breeds registered. In the UK they are not quite so popular, placing 28th and 30th in the rankings of registrations with the Kennel Club in 2005 and 2006 respectively. In the United States the beagle ranked 4th most popular breed in 2012 and 2013, behind the Labrador Retriever, German Shepherd, and Golden Retriever. ## Name According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first mention of beagle in English literature dates from c. 1475 in The Squire of Low Degree. The origin of the word beagle is uncertain, although it has been suggested that the word derives from the French begueule which means "gate throat". It is not known why the black and tan Kerry Beagle, present in Ireland since Celtic times, has the beagle description, since at 22 to 24 inches (56 to 61 cm) it is significantly taller than the modern day Beagle, and in earlier times was even larger. Some writers suggest that the Beagle's scenting ability may have come from cross-breeding earlier strains with the Kerry Beagle. Originally used for hunting stags, it is today used for hare and drag hunting. ## Appearance The general appearance of the Beagle resembles a miniature Foxhound, but the head is broader and the muzzle shorter, the expression completely different and the legs shorter in proportion to the body. They are generally between 33 and 40 centimetres (13 and 16 in) high at the withers and weigh between 18 and 35 lb (8.2 and 15.9 kg), with females being slightly smaller than males on average. They have a smooth, somewhat domed skull with a medium-length, square-cut muzzle, and a black (or occasionally liver) gumdrop nose. The jaw is strong, and the teeth scissor together with the upper teeth fitting perfectly over the lower teeth. Both sets align square to the jaw. The eyes are large, hazel or brown, with a mild, hound-like pleading look. The large ears are long, soft, and low-set, turning towards the cheeks slightly and rounded at the tips. Beagles have a strong, medium-length neck (which is long enough for them to easily bend to the ground to pick up a scent), with little folding in the skin but some evidence of a dewlap; a broad chest narrowing to a tapered abdomen and waist and a long, slightly curved tail (known as the "stern") tipped with white. The white tip, known as the flag, was bred for selectively, as the tail remains easily seen when the dog's head is down following a scent. The tail does not curl over the back, but is held upright when the dog is active. The Beagle has a muscular body and a medium-length, smooth, hard coat. The front legs are straight and carried under the body while the rear legs are muscular and well bent at the stifles. The tricoloured Beagle—white with large black areas and light brown shading—is the most common. Tricoloured Beagles occur in a number of shades, from the "Classic Tri" with a jet black saddle (also known as "Blackback"), to the "Dark Tri" (where faint brown markings are intermingled with more prominent black markings), to the "Faded Tri" (where faint black markings are intermingled with more prominent brown markings). Some tricoloured dogs have a broken pattern, sometimes referred to as pied. These dogs have mostly white coats with patches of black and brown hair. Tricolour Beagles are almost always born black and white. The white areas are typically set by eight weeks, but the black areas may fade to brown as the puppy matures. (The brown may take between one and two years to fully develop.) Some Beagles gradually change colour during their lives, and may lose their black markings entirely. Two-colour varieties always have a white base colour with areas of the second colour. Tan and white is the most common two-colour variety, but there is a wide range of other colours including lemon, a very light tan; red, a reddish, almost orange, brown; and liver, a darker brown, and black. Liver is not common and is not permitted in some standards; it tends to occur with yellow eyes. Ticked or mottled varieties may be either white or black with different coloured flecks (ticking), such as the blue-mottled or bluetick Beagle, which has spots that appear to be a midnight-blue colour, similar to the colouring of the Bluetick Coonhound. Some tricolour Beagles also have ticking of various colours in their white areas. Saddle-patterned Beagles that express ancient domino (eA) are called hare-pied. Domino restricts eumelanin production leading to a smaller and faded saddle. Dark hairs in the area of the saddle have a light-coloured hair base. The nose pigment may be lightened down the middle. ## Sense of smell Alongside the Bloodhound and Basset Hound, the Beagle has one of the best developed senses of smell of any dog. In the 1950s, John Paul Scott and John Fuller began a 13-year study of canine behaviour. As part of this research, they tested the scenting abilities of various breeds by putting a mouse in a one-acre field and timing how long it took the dogs to find it. The Beagles found it in less than a minute while Fox Terriers took 15 minutes and Scottish Terriers failed to find it at all. The long ears and large lips of the Beagle probably assist in trapping the scents close to the nose. ## Variations ### Breed varieties The American Kennel Club recognises two separate varieties of Beagle: the 13-inch for hounds less than 13 inches (33 cm), and the 15-inch for those between 13 and 15 inches (33 and 38 cm). The Canadian Kennel Club recognises a single type, with a height not exceeding 15 inches (38 cm). The Kennel Club (UK) and FCI affiliated clubs recognise a single type, with a height of between 13 and 16 inches (33 and 41 cm). English and American varieties are sometimes mentioned. However, there is no official recognition from any Kennel Club for this distinction. Beagles fitting the American Kennel Club standard – which disallows animals over 15 inches (38 cm) – are smaller on average than those fitting the Kennel Club standard which allows heights up to 16 inches (41 cm). Pocket Beagles are sometimes advertised for sale but while the UK Kennel Club originally specified a standard for the pocket Beagle in 1901, the variety is now not recognised by any Kennel Club. A strain known as Patch Hounds was developed by Willet Randall and his family from 1896 specifically for their rabbit hunting ability. They trace their bloodline back to Field Champion Patch, but do not necessarily have a patchwork marking. ### Crossbreeds In the 1850s, John Henry Walsh (Stonehenge) recommended a cross between a Beagle and a Scottish Terrier as a retriever. He found the crossbreed to be a good worker, silent and obedient, but it had the drawback that it was small and could barely carry a hare. More recently, the trend has been for "designer dogs" and one of the most popular has been the Beagle/Pug cross known as a puggle. Some puppies of this cross are less excitable than a Beagle and with a lower exercise requirement, similar to the Pug parent; but many are highly excitable and require vigorous exercise. ## Temperament The Beagle has an even temper and gentle disposition. Described in several breed standards as "merry", they are amiable and typically neither aggressive nor timid, although this depends on the individual. They enjoy company, and although they may initially be standoffish with strangers, they are easily won over. They make poor guard dogs for this reason, although their tendency to bark or howl when confronted with the unfamiliar makes them good watch dogs. In a 1985 study conducted by Ben and Lynette Hart, the Beagle was given the highest excitability rating, along with the Yorkshire Terrier, Cairn Terrier, Miniature Schnauzer, West Highland White Terrier, and Fox Terrier. They are ranked 72nd in Stanley Coren's The Intelligence of Dogs, as Coren places them among the group with the lowest degree of working/obedience intelligence. Coren's scale, however, does not assess understanding, independence, or creativity. Beagles are excellent with children and this is one of the reasons they have become popular family pets. Beagles are pack animals; they are prone to separation anxiety, a condition which causes them to destroy things when left unattended. Not all Beagles will howl, but most will bark when confronted with strange situations, and some will bay (also referred to as "speaking", "giving tongue", or "opening") when they catch the scent of potential quarry. They also generally get along well with cats and other dogs. They are not too demanding with regard to exercise; their inbred stamina means they do not easily tire when exercised, but they also do not need to be worked to exhaustion before they will rest. Regular exercise helps ward off the weight gain to which the breed is prone. ## Health A 2024 study in the UK found a life expectancy of 12.5 years compared to an average of 12.7 for purebreeds and 12 for crossbreeds. A 2024 Italian study found a life expectancy of 11 years for the breed compared to 10 years overall. Beagles may be prone to epilepsy, but this can often be controlled with medication. hypothyroidism and a number of types of dwarfism occur in Beagles. Two conditions in particular are unique to the breed: "Funny Puppy", in which the puppy is slow to develop and eventually develops weak legs, a crooked back and although normally healthy, is prone to a range of illnesses; and Musladin-Lueke syndrome (MLS) in which the eyes are slanted and the outer toes are underdeveloped but otherwise development is as normal. Hip dysplasia, common in Harriers and in some larger breeds, is rarely considered a problem in Beagles. Beagles are considered a chondrodystrophic breed, meaning that they are prone to types of disk diseases. In rare cases, Beagles may develop immune mediated polygenic arthritis (where the immune system attacks the joints) even at a young age. The symptoms can sometimes be relieved by steroid treatments. Another rare disease in the breed is neonatal cerebellar cortical degeneration. Affected puppies are slow, have lower co-ordination, fall more often, and do not have a normal gait. It has an estimated carrier rate of 5% and affected rate of 0.1%. A genetic test is available. Their long floppy ears can mean that the inner ear does not receive a substantial air flow or that moist air becomes trapped, and this can lead to ear infections. Beagles may also be affected by a range of eye problems; two common ophthalmic conditions in beagles are glaucoma and corneal dystrophy. "Cherry eye", a prolapse of the gland of the third eyelid, and distichiasis, a condition in which eyelashes grow into the eye causing irritation, sometimes exist; both these conditions can be corrected with surgery. They can suffer from several types of retinal atrophy. Failure of the nasolacrimal drainage system can cause dry eye or leakage of tears onto the face. The cause of primary open angle glaucoma in the Beagle is an autosomal recessive mutation in the ADAMTS10 gene. As field dogs they are prone to minor injuries such as cuts and sprains, and, if inactive, obesity is a common problem as they will eat whenever food is available and rely on their owners to regulate their weight. When working or running free they are also likely to pick up parasites such as fleas, ticks, harvest mites, and tapeworms, and irritants such as grass seeds can become trapped in their eyes, soft ears, or paws. Beagles may exhibit a behaviour known as reverse sneezing, in which they sound as if they are choking or gasping for breath, but are actually drawing air in through the mouth and nose. The exact cause of this behaviour is not known, but it can be a common occurrence and is not harmful to the dog. Canine juvenile polyarteritis syndrome, also known as juvenile polyarteritis syndrome of beagle dogs is a multisystemic necrotising vasculitis of the small arteries. The condition is characterised by a reoccurrent acute fever and cervicalgia over a period of 3-7 days. The Beagle is predisposed with most reports concerning the breed — whence the name 'Beagle pain syndrome'. ## Hunting Beagles were developed primarily for hunting rabbit or hare, an activity known as beagling. They were seen as ideal hunting companions for the elderly who could follow on horseback without exerting themselves, for young hunters who could keep up with them on ponies, and for the poorer hunters who could not afford to maintain a stable of good hunting horses. Before the advent of the fashion for foxhunting in the 19th century, hunting was an all day event where the enjoyment was derived from the chase rather than the kill. In this setting, the tiny Beagle was well matched to the hare, as unlike Harriers they would not quickly finish the hunt, but because of their excellent scent-tracking skills and stamina they were almost guaranteed to eventually catch the hare. The Beagle packs would run closely together ("so close that they might be covered with a sheet") which was useful in a long hunt, as it prevented stray dogs from obscuring the trail. In thick undergrowth they were also preferred to spaniels when hunting pheasant. With the fashion for faster hunts, the beagle fell out of favour for chasing hare, but was still employed for rabbit hunting. In Anecdotes of Dogs (1846), Edward Jesse says: > In rabbit-shooting, in gorse and thick cover, nothing can be more cheerful than the beagle. They also are easily heard over long distances and in thick cover. They have been called rabbit-beagles from this employment, for which they are peculiarly qualified, especially those dogs which are somewhat wire-haired. In the United States they appear to have been employed chiefly for hunting rabbits from the earliest imports. Hunting hare with Beagles became popular again in Britain in the mid-19th century and continued until it was made illegal in Scotland by the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act 2002, and in England and Wales by the Hunting Act 2004. Under this legislation, Beagles may still pursue rabbits with the landowner's permission. Drag hunting is popular where hunting is no longer permitted or for those owners who do not wish to participate in hunting a live animal, but still wish to exercise their dog's innate skills. The traditional foot pack consists of up to 40 Beagles, marshaled by a Huntsman who directs the pack and who is assisted by a variable number of whippers-in whose job is to return straying hounds to the pack. The Master of the Hunt is in overall day-to-day charge of the pack, and may or may not take on the role of Huntsman on the day of the hunt. As hunting with Beagles was seen as ideal for young people, many of the British public schools traditionally maintained Beagle packs. Protests were lodged against Eton's use of Beagles for hunting as early as 1902 but the pack is still in existence today. In 2001, the Wye College beagle pack was taken by the Animal Liberation Front. School and university packs are still maintained by Eton, Marlborough, Radley, the Royal Agricultural University, and Christ Church, Oxford. In addition to organised beagling, Beagles have been used for hunting or flushing to guns (often in pairs) a wide range of game including snowshoe hare, cottontail rabbits, game birds, roe deer, red deer, bobcat, coyote, wild boar, and foxes, and have even been recorded as being used to hunt stoat. In most of these cases, the beagle is employed as a gun dog, flushing game for hunter's guns. ## Detection Beagles are used as detection dogs in the Beagle Brigade of the United States Department of Agriculture. These dogs are used to detect food items in luggage being taken into the United States. After trialling several breeds, Beagles were chosen because they are relatively small and unintimidating for people who are uncomfortable around dogs, easy to care for, intelligent and work well for rewards. They are also used for this purpose in a number of other countries including by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in New Zealand, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, and in Canada, Japan, and the People's Republic of China. Larger breeds are generally used for detection of explosives as this often involves climbing over luggage and on large conveyor belts, work for which the smaller Beagle is not suited. ## Use in animal testing Beagles are the dog breed most often used in animal testing, due to their size and passive nature. In the United States, as many as 65,000 Beagles are used every year for medical, cosmetic, beauty, and other chemical tests. They are purpose bred and live their lives in cages undergoing experiments. The Rescue + Freedom Project (formerly Beagle Freedom Project) has successfully advocated for Beagles to be released from labs. Beagles are used in a range of research procedures: fundamental biological research, applied human medicine, applied veterinary medicine, and protection of man, animals, or the environment. Of the 8,018 dogs used in testing in the UK in 2004, 7,799 were Beagles (97.3%). In the UK, the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 gave special status to primates, equids, cats and dogs and in 2005 the Animal Procedures Committee (set up by the act) ruled that testing on mice was preferable, even though a greater number of individual animals were involved. In 2005 beagles were involved in less than 0.3% of the total experiments on animals in the UK, but of the 7670 experiments performed on dogs 7406 involved Beagles (96.6%). Most dogs are bred specifically for this purpose, by companies such as Harlan. In the UK companies breeding animals for research must be licensed under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act. ### Bans and activism against Beagle testing Testing of cosmetic products on animals is banned in the member states of the European Community, although France protested the ban and has made efforts to have it lifted. It is permitted in the United States but is not mandatory if safety can be ascertained by other methods, and the test species is not specified by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). When testing toxicity of food additives, food contaminants, and some drugs and chemicals the FDA uses Beagles and miniature pigs as surrogates for direct human testing. Minnesota was the first state to enact a Beagle Freedom adoption law in 2014, mandating that dogs and cats are allowed to be adopted once they have completed research testing. Anti-vivisection groups have reported on abuse of animals inside testing facilities. In 1997 footage secretly filmed by a freelance journalist inside Huntingdon Life Sciences in the UK showed staff punching and screaming at Beagles. Consort Kennels, a UK-based breeder of Beagles for testing, closed down in 1997 after pressure from animal rights groups. There are various examples of activists utilising Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to obtain information about taxpayer funding of animal testing. For example, the White Coat Waste Project, a group of activists that hold that taxpayers should not have to pay $20 billion every year for experiments on animals, highlighted that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases provided $400,000 in taxpayer money to fund experiments in which 28 Beagles were infected by disease-causing parasites. The White Coat Project found reports that said dogs taking part in the experiments were "vocalizing in pain" after being injected with foreign substances. Following public outcry, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) made a call to action that all members of the National Institute of Health resign effective immediately and that there is a "need to find a new NIH director to replace the outgoing Francis Collins who will shut down research that violates the dignity of nonhuman animals." ### Animal welfare research A 2023 research article report lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in beagles kept in larger areas with toys. A 2024 article researches the use of environmental enrichment in lab beagles by adding toys to their cages. ## Other roles Although bred for hunting, Beagles are versatile and are nowadays employed for various other roles in detection, therapy, and as family pets. Beagles are used as sniffer dogs for termite detection in Australia, and have been mentioned as possible candidates for drug and explosive detection. Because of their gentle nature and unimposing build, they are also frequently used in pet therapy, visiting the sick and elderly in hospital. In June 2006, a trained Beagle assistance dog was credited with saving the life of its owner after using her owner's mobile phone to dial an emergency number. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, a Beagle search and rescue dog with a Colombian rescue squad was credited with locating the owner of the Hôtel Montana, who was subsequently rescued after spending 100 hours buried in the rubble. Beagles were hired by New York City to help with bedbug detection, although some have expressed doubts about the role of such dogs in this type of detection. ## In popular culture - Anthropomorphic Beagles appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons since the 1950s with the Peanuts character Snoopy, who was billed as "the world's most famous Beagle". The clay animation, Wallace and Gromit, also features a beagle – the titular Gromit – in its cast. - Former US President Lyndon Baines Johnson had several Beagles, and caused an outcry when he picked up one of them by its ears during an official greeting on the White House lawn. - The ship on which Charles Darwin made the voyage which provided much of the inspiration for On the Origin of Species was named HMS Beagle after the breed, and, in turn, lent its name to the ill-fated British Martian lander Beagle 2. - An American bred 15 inch male Beagle with the registered name of Ch K-Run's Park Me In First and the pet name of "Uno" won the 2008 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. - A Canadian bred 15 inch female Beagle with the registered name of Gr Ch Tashtins Lookin For Trouble and the pet name of "Miss P" won the 2015 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. ## Notable Beagles - Uno, who in 2008 became the first Beagle to win the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show - Miss P, winner of the 2015 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show

1950 Atlantic hurricane season

The 1950 Atlantic hurricane season was the first year in the Atlantic hurricane database (HURDAT) that storms were given names in the Atlantic basin. Names were taken from the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet, with the first named storm being designated "Able", the second "Baker", and so on. It was a very active season with sixteen tropical storms, with eleven of them developing into hurricanes. Six of these hurricanes were intense enough to be classified as major hurricanes—a denomination reserved for storms that attained sustained winds equivalent to a Category 3 or greater on the present-day Saffir–Simpson scale. One storm, the twelfth of the season, was unnamed and was originally excluded from the yearly summary, and three additional storms were discovered in re-analysis. The large quantity of strong storms during the year yielded, prior to modern reanalysis, what was the highest seasonal accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) of the 20th century in the Atlantic basin; 1950 held the seasonal ACE record until broken by the 1995 Atlantic hurricane season. However, later examination by researchers determined that several storms in the 1950 season were weaker than thought, leading to a lower ACE than assessed originally. This season also set the record for the most tropical storms, eight, in the month of October. The tropical cyclones of the season produced a total of 88 fatalities and $38.5 million in property damage (1950 USD). The first officially named Atlantic hurricane was Hurricane Able, which formed on August 12, brushed the North Carolina coastline, and later moved across Atlantic Canada. The strongest hurricane of the season, Hurricane Dog, reached the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale and caused extensive damage to the Leeward Islands. Two major hurricanes affected Florida: Easy produced the highest 24-hour rainfall total recorded in the United States, while King struck downtown Miami as a Category 4 hurricane and caused $27.75 million (1950 USD) of damage. The two major landfalls made the 1945–1950 period the only five-year period to feature five major hurricane landfalls in the United States—a record that held until tied in 2000–2005. The last storm of the year, an unnamed tropical storm, dissipated on November 12. ## Seasonal summary The season officially began on June 15 and ended on November 15; these dates conventionally delimit the period of each year when most tropical cyclones form in the Atlantic basin. This season was the first time that the United States Weather Bureau operated with radar technology to observe hurricanes 200 mi (320 km) away from land. Although the season began on June 15, tropical activity typically does not begin before August. The tropics remained tranquil through early August, and the U.S. Weather Bureau noted that the season had been "remarkably quiet". The inactive period ended on August 12, when the first tropical storm developed east of the Lesser Antilles. This storm received the name "Able" as part of the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet. (The same alphabet was also used in the 1951 and 1952 seasons, before being replaced by female naming in 1953.) Before the end of August, four hurricanes had formed in the Atlantic, two of which attained major hurricane status. A major hurricane is a tropical cyclone with winds of at least 111 mph (179 km/h); a storm of this intensity would be classified as a Category 3 or greater on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale introduced in the 1970s. In contrast to the busy August, only three named storms developed in September—although three of the August hurricanes lasted into September. Hurricane Dog became the strongest hurricane of the season on September 6 with winds of 145 mph (233 km/h); its peak strength occurred over the open Atlantic Ocean, so it did not cause significant damage when it was at its strongest. It was among the most severe hurricanes on record in Antigua, where the hurricane struck early in its duration. Eight tropical storms or hurricanes formed in October, which is greater than in any other year. In total, there were sixteen tropical storms during the season, of which five (Tropical Storm How, Tropical Storm Mike and three unnamed tropical storms) did not attain hurricane status. Overall, six major hurricanes occurred during the year. The Hurricane Hunters made about 300 flights into hurricanes during the season, the most since the practice began in 1943. The number of storms was above average; in a typical year, eleven tropical storms, six hurricanes, and between two and three major hurricanes take place. With the numerous major hurricanes, the season produced a high accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) of 211, although it was originally assessed as 243 before reanalysis. At one point, the 1950 total was the highest on record, before being surpassed by the 2005 season. This value is an approximation of the combined kinetic energy used by all tropical cyclones throughout the season. ## Systems ### Hurricane Able The beginning of the hurricane season was inactive, with the formation of no tropical cyclones during June or July. The first storm of the year originated from a tropical wave that exited the west coast of Africa around August 5. Its status over the next few days were unknown due to sparse observations. On August 12, the system was designated Tropical Storm Able east of the Lesser Antilles, which strengthened to hurricane status on August 14. Able gradually intensified as it tracked generally west-northwestward, and by 12:00 UTC on August 17, Able became a major hurricane. Initially, Able was thought to pose a threat to the Bahamas and Florida. Instead, the hurricane turned to the northwest, reaching its peak intensity as a strong Category 3 hurricane, with winds of 125 mph (201 km/h). The storm later turned to the northeast, passing just offshore Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and Cape Cod. Steadily weakening and accelerating, Able struck Nova Scotia as a minimal hurricane, and later struck Newfoundland as an extratropical storm. It dissipated early on August 24 in the far northern Atlantic Ocean. Along the coast of North Carolina, the hurricane produced light winds and rough waves, as well as moderate precipitation. Heavier rainfall occurred in southern New England, causing flooding in portions of New York City and producing slick roads that caused nine traffic fatalities. Able produced hurricane-force winds in Nova Scotia, and damage across Canada totaled over $1 million (1950 CAD, $ 2024 USD) in the agriculture, communications, and fishing industries. Two people died in Canada when their raft was overturned. ### Hurricane Baker A tropical wave exited western Africa on August 13, which developed into Tropical Storm Baker east of the Lesser Antilles on August 18. It moved northwestward and later turned to the west, attaining hurricane status on August 21. The next day, the hurricane attained Category 2 intensity just as it crossed over Antigua, where heavy damage was reported. More than 100 homes were damaged or destroyed, which left thousands homeless. Afterward, the hurricane began to weaken, and later on August 22 its winds decreased to tropical storm status. The cyclone then struck Montserrat as a strong tropical storm. The next day it struck southwestern Puerto Rico, and shortly thereafter weakened into a tropical depression, passing over the Dominican Republic. Baker turned more to the west, re-attaining tropical storm status before striking eastern Cuba on August 24. In Cuba, 37 people died, and the property losses reached several million dollars. On August 25, Baker weakened to tropical depression status while crossing Cuba, but soon thereafter regained tropical storm intensity in the western Caribbean Sea. Two days later, Baker entered the Gulf of Mexico, and by the next day Baker had regained hurricane status. It turned northward, reaching a peak intensity of 105 mph (169 km/h) on August 30. Baker weakened slightly before making landfall near Gulf Shores, Alabama with winds of 85 mph (137 km/h) on August 31. Property and crop damage totaled $2.55 million (1950 USD), primarily between Mobile, Alabama and Saint Marks, Florida. Torrential rainfall fell throughout the region, with the largest total occurring in Caryville, Florida, where 15.49 in (393 mm) of precipitation were recorded. The heavy precipitation was responsible for extensive crop damage across the region. The hurricane also spawned two tornadoes, one of which destroyed four houses and a building in Apalachicola, Florida. In Birmingham, Alabama, high wind downed power lines, which caused one death and two injuries due to live wires. While inland, Baker tracked northwestward and eventually dissipated over southeastern Missouri on September 1. ### Hurricane Charlie Hurricane Charlie developed on August 21 to the southwest of the Cape Verde islands. At the time, the Weather Bureau did not consider Charlie to be a tropical cyclone until almost a week later. For four days, the storm tracked generally to the west as a weak tropical storm. On August 25, it turned to the northwest and intensified, becoming a hurricane on August 28. On August 30, Charlie attained peak winds of 110 mph (180 km/h), although the Hurricane Hunters estimated higher winds. At the time, the hurricane was stalled to the east-southeast of Bermuda, and subsequently turned to a westward drift. On September 2, Charlie turned to the north and northeast. At the time, it co-existed with two other hurricanes, Dog and Easy; it is a rare occurrence for three hurricanes to exist simultaneously in the Atlantic. Charlie slowly weakened and lost tropical characteristics, and by September 5 Charlie had transitioned into an extratropical cyclone about 480 mi (770 km) southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It dissipated later on September 5 without having affected land. ### Hurricane Dog Hurricane Dog is believed to have developed from a tropical wave that left the coast of Africa on August 24. Its first observation as a tropical cyclone occurred on August 30, when it was a 90 mph (140 km/h) hurricane; the storm is believed to have begun farther east as a Cape Verde-type hurricane, but was not detectable before August 30. At the time, Dog was located east of the Lesser Antilles, and it quickly attained major hurricane status as it moved to the west-northwest. Dog passed through the Lesser Antilles with winds of 130 mph (210 km/h). It was considered among the worst hurricanes in the history of Antigua, where thousands were left homeless. Damage was estimated at $1 million (1950 USD$, 2024 USD), and there were two deaths from drowning in the region. After passing through the Leeward Islands, the hurricane turned to a northerly drift with continued intensification. On September 5, it attained wind speeds that would be equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane on the present-day Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds of 145 mph (233 km/h). Operationally, the wind intensity value was estimated by Hurricane Hunters at 185 mph (298 km/h) when the hurricane was located about 450 mi (720 km) south-southwest of Bermuda; this estimate is now believed to have been an overestimation of the peak winds in Hurricane Dog, though the storm produced enormous wave heights at sea. Maintaining peak intensity for about 18 hours, Dog began a weakening trend as it made a sharp turn to the west. It accelerated to the north on September 10, and two days later Dog passed within 200 mi (320 km) of Cape Cod. Newspapers attributed heavy rainfall in the Mid-Atlantic states—which resulted in five deaths—to the hurricane. Further north, the hurricane killed 12 people in New England, and produced a total of $2 million (1950 USD$, 2024 USD) of property damage. Twelve others died in two shipwrecks off the coast of Canada. The hurricane later became a strong extratropical cyclone, maintaining hurricane-force winds while passing south of Nova Scotia and eventually hitting Scotland with hurricane-force gusts on September 18. ### Hurricane Easy Hurricane Easy developed on September 1 from a trough in the western Caribbean, which persisted after Hurricane Baker moved through the region in late August. Moving northeastward, the hurricane crossed Cuba on September 3 and entered the Gulf of Mexico. Easy turned to the northwest and strengthened to its peak intensity as a Category 3 hurricane. At the time, Easy was located just off the west coast of Florida; however, a ridge to its north caused the hurricane to stall, execute a small loop, and make landfall near Cedar Key. Following the landfall, Easy moved offshore, turned to the southeast, and made a second landfall near Hernando Beach on September 6. The hurricane turned northwestward over the Florida Peninsula, and gradually weakened as it moved into Georgia and the southeastern United States. On September 9, Easy dissipated over northeastern Arkansas. Damage in Cuba was minor, although large portions of western Florida experienced hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall. Yankeetown reported 38.70 in (983 mm) of precipitation in 24 hours, which at the time was the largest 24-hour rainfall total on record in the United States. The cumulative total rainfall on Yankeetown from Easy was 45.20 in (1,148 mm), which still retains the record for the wettest tropical cyclone in Florida. Damage was heaviest in Cedar Key, where half of the houses were destroyed and most of the remaining were damaged. The rainfall caused heavy crop damage in the region. Across the state, Easy caused $3 million in damage (1950 USD), the total was less than expected, due to the sparse population of the affected area. Additionally, the hurricane was indirectly responsible for two deaths by electrocution. At the time, Easy was also known as the "Cedar Keys Hurricane". ### Hurricane Fox On September 8, Tropical Storm Fox was present in the open Atlantic Ocean between the Lesser Antilles and Cape Verde, likely originating from a tropical wave. Hurricane Fox was first discovered by Hurricane Hunters on September 10, when it was located about 1,000 mi (1,600 km) east of Puerto Rico. A small system, the hurricane moved generally northwestward and gradually intensified. After turning toward the north, Fox reached its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (230 km/h) on September 14, as it passed about 300 mi (480 km) east of Bermuda. Following its peak intensity, the hurricane accelerated to the north and northeast. By September 17, Fox had lost all tropical characteristics, and later that day the circulation dissipated about halfway between the Azores and Newfoundland. Fox never affected land along its path. When Fox dissipated, it was the first time in 36 days without an active tropical cyclone in the Atlantic Ocean. ### Hurricane George Tropical Storm George originated on September 27 from a strong tropical wave northeast of the Lesser Antilles and southeast of Bermuda. A large system, it moved to the northwest and later west-northwest. George began strengthening on September 30 as it decreased its forward speed. The next day, while remaining nearly stationary south of Bermuda, a nearby ship reported that George had reached hurricane status. It continued moving very slowly, passing only 100 mi (160 km) south of Bermuda. The island experienced winds of 30 to 40 mph (48 to 64 km/h). Aside from rainbands, little impact was reported on Bermuda. The hurricane passed west of Bermuda on October 3. A day later, George reached its maximum intensity, attaining sustained winds of 110 mph (180 km/h); in its small eye, an Air Force Hurricane Hunter plane measured a central pressure of 960 mb (28.35 inHg). It accelerated to the north and later to the northeast, and on October 5 George transitioned into an extratropical cyclone. Shortly thereafter, it passed just south of Newfoundland, and on October 7 the remnants of George dissipated south of Iceland. ### Tropical Storm How A weak trough existed in the eastern Gulf of Mexico on September 29. A circulation developed within the storm, becoming a tropical depression on October 1. Later that day, the system intensified into Tropical Storm How. Initially, the tropical storm moved west-northwestward and its sustained winds peaked by October 2, estimated at 45 mph (72 km/h). Officials advised small boats to remain at port along the Louisiana coast due to the storm. On October 3, Tropical Storm How turned toward the southwest as it began weakening, and the next day it moved ashore near La Pesca, Tamaulipas as a tropical depression. About six hours after making landfall, How dissipated over the Sierra Madre Oriental in northeastern Mexico. ### Hurricane Item On October 4, a trough was present in the western Caribbean Sea, and was possibly a tropical cyclone. Moving northwest, the system crossed the Yucatán Peninsula and became disrupted, while also associating with a cold front. It emerged into the Gulf of Mexico on October 7 and became more defined. On the next day, the system developed into Tropical Storm Item off the northwest coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. The storm moved to the southwest and intensified into a hurricane on October 9, reaching peak winds of 105 mph (169 km/h) on the next day based on Hurricane Hunters observations. It is possible that Item was stronger, due to the storm's small size but lack of direct observations. On October 11, the hurricane made landfall at 04:00 UTC near Nautla, Veracruz, with peak gusts of 110 mph (180 km/h). The hurricane quickly dissipated over land. In the sparsely populated area where Item moved ashore, the hurricane dropped heavy rainfall. Newspaper reports considered it the worst storm to hit Mexico in ten years, with damage in Veracruz totaling around $1.5 million (1950 USD$, 2024 USD). The strong winds sank 20 ships, and although there were no reports of casualties, Item caused 15 injuries. Communications were disrupted across the region, and downed trees blocked roads. Near Tuxpam, the winds damaged large areas of banana plantations. ### Hurricane Jig A tropical storm was first observed on October 11 in the central Atlantic Ocean, northeast of the Lesser Antilles and southeast of Bermuda. Two days later, a ship reported strong winds and a rapid pressure drop, indicating a hurricane was in the region; the tropical cyclone was given the name Jig. It moved northwestward, steadily intensifying before turning to the north and northeast. On October 15, Hurricane Jig passed about 300 mi (480 km) east of Bermuda, and later that day its sustained winds reach peak winds of 115 mph (185 km/h), although the intensity was uncertain, based on estimates from the Hurricane Hunters. The hurricane began weakening on October 16. Jig became an extratropical cyclone later that day and quickly dissipated, never having affected land due to its small size. ### Hurricane King A trough was present in the western Caribbean on October 11. It is estimated that a tropical depression developed just off the north coast of Honduras on October 13, which moved northeastward and intensified into Tropical Storm King the next day. The tropical storm was a small weather system throughout its duration. On October 16, King reached hurricane strength while the passing between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. The next day, King struck Cuba near Camagüey, Cuba with winds of 90 mph (140 km/h), equivalent to an upper-end Category 1 hurricane. The hurricane killed seven people and caused $2 million (1950 USD$, 2024 USD) in damage throughout the country. After crossing Cuba, King rapidly deepened as it turned toward South Florida, becoming the sixth and final major hurricane of the season on October 18. King made landfall around 04:30 UTC on October 18, with estimated winds of 130 mph (210 km/h), or a Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale; it was the most severe hurricane to impact the city since the 1926 Miami hurricane. As it approached Miami, the hurricane had a radius of maximum winds of 6 mi (9.7 km), and a minimum pressure of 955 mbar (28.2 inHg) was reported as King moved across the city. The swath of destructive winds was only 14 mi (23 km), likened to a small tornado. Early on October 19, King weakened to tropical storm status over north-central Florida, and on the next day it dissipated over western Georgia. There was one additional death in Georgia. Across Florida, damage totaled $27.75 million (1950 USD$, 2024 USD), of which $15 million (1950 USD$, 2024 USD) was in the Miami metropolitan area. A preliminary survey indicated there were 12,290 houses damaged in the region, with an additional eight destroyed. Along its path through the state, strong winds were observed around Lake Okeechobee, with a 93 mph (150 km/h) gust in Clewiston. Overall, there were three deaths in the state. ### Tropical Storm Twelve A tropical storm was present in the east-central Atlantic on October 17. It moved northwestward at first before turning to the northeast on October 19, when it was already a small, compact tropical cyclone. The storm steadily intensified as it tracked toward the Azores, and it reached a peak intensity of 70 mph (110 km/h) on October 21. Maintaining its peak strength for 30 hours, the storm began a steady weakening trend before crossing through the southern Azores. It turned to the southeast, weakening to tropical depression status on October 24. Subsequently, the system turned to the south and quickly dissipated. This tropical storm was not included in the Monthly Weather Review's summary of the 1950 hurricane season, but was added to the Atlantic hurricane database in 1959. ### Hurricane Love In the wake of Hurricane King moving northward through Florida, an area of low pressure developed into a tropical cyclone on October 18 south of Louisiana. This storm was given the name Love and quickly strengthened, reaching hurricane status shortly thereafter. The storm initially moved westward across the Gulf of Mexico, but soon swung southward into the central portion of the Gulf on October 19. Hurricane Love's maximum sustained winds are believed to have reached their peak intensity early on October 20. Throughout the hurricane's track, dry air infringed on the western side of the tropical cyclone's circulation, which produced unfavorable conditions for additional tropical cyclogenesis. On October 20, the storm began curving northeastward towards the coast of western Florida; however, the dry air completely circled Love's center of circulation, drastically weakening the cyclone in the process. On October 21, Love weakened to a tropical storm, and it struck the Big Bend region of Florida, north of Cedar Key. At the time, its winds were only of moderate gale force, and the storm degenerated into a trough of low pressure shortly thereafter. This combined with an approaching cold front to produce a powerful extratropical storm. Certain areas began preparing for the storm along Florida's west coast. Hospitals set up emergency facilities in case of power failure, and some coastal residents left their homes. Initially, the storm was forecast to strike the Tampa area, but missed to the north as it weakened. It reportedly left little damage in the sparsely populated land where it made landfall. ### Tropical Storm Mike A westerly moving trough was evident in the east-central Atlantic Ocean on October 24, south of a dissipating cold front. Ships in the region reported light winds, and surface observations suggested that a circulation developed by October 25; on that basis, it is estimated that a tropical depression formed. A nearby ship reported gale-force winds on October 27, suggesting that it intensified into a tropical storm with peak winds of 45 mph (72 km/h). An approaching cold front turned the storm northward, which absorbed the storm on October 28. The Air Weather Service (AWS) noted the system as "Storm Mike", but the storm was not included in the annual Monthly Weather Review summary, nor was it included in the database until it was added by the Atlantic hurricane reanalysis project in 2014. ### Tropical Storm Fifteen Ships in the eastern Atlantic Ocean suggested that a tropical storm was present on October 28 with peak winds of 50 mph (80 km/h). It was estimated to have originated the previous day. The small storm moved to the northwest and later west into an area of sparse observations, suggesting a weaker system. The system's track ended on October 29 due to uncertainty, but it was estimated to have dissipated soon after. ### Tropical Storm Sixteen For several days in November, a trough was present across the west-central Atlantic Ocean. On November 10, three ships reported a cyclonic circulation northeast of Bermuda, with peak winds of 70 mph (110 km/h). It was a large system, and would likely have been classified a subtropical cyclone in the satellite era. The storm moved northeastward and weakened, degenerating into a trough on November 12 before being merging with another system. ## Storm names The Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet was used to name cyclones that attained at least tropical storm status in the North Atlantic in 1950. This was the first season in which tropical storms in the basin were officially given names. ## Season effects This is a table of all of the storms that formed in the 1950 Atlantic hurricane season. It includes their name, duration, peak classification and intensities, areas affected, damage, and death totals. Deaths in parentheses are additional and indirect (an example of an indirect death would be a traffic accident), but were still related to that storm. Damage and deaths include totals while the storm was extratropical, a wave, or a low, and all of the damage figures are in 1950 USD. ## See also - 1950 Pacific hurricane season - 1950 Pacific typhoon season - 1950s North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons - 1900–1950 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone seasons - 1950s Australian region cyclone seasons - 1950s South Pacific cyclone seasons

American Bank Note Company Printing Plant

Building complex in the Bronx, New York

The American Bank Note Company Printing Plant is a repurposed printing plant in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. The main structure includes three interconnected buildings. The Lafayette wing, spanning the south side of the block, is the longest and tallest, incorporating an entrance at the base of a nine-story tower. The lower, more massive Garrison wing is perpendicular. These two were built first, and constitute the bulk of the complex. Prior to the American Bank Note Company purchasing the property, the land on which the printing plant was built had been part of Edward G. Faile's estate. The plant was built in 1909–1911 by the American Bank Note Company contemporaneously with their corporate headquarters at 70 Broad Street, Manhattan. The design by Kirby, Petit & Green (who also designed the Broad Street building) incorporated advanced engineering ideas such as the sawtooth roof and large windows for improved lighting, unit drive electric motors in lieu of line shafts, and increased electrical capacity; layout was based on a design philosophy of specifying the production lines first, followed by the building which could enclose them. A small detached garage at the rear of the block was added in approximately 1911 and the Barretto wing was added to the east side of the property in 1912. Several building expansions took place between 1912 and 1928. A wide variety of financial documents, including international currency, were printed at the plant. At one point, over five million documents were produced per day, including half the securities being traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Although the plant printed money for countries around the world, it was best known for producing currencies for countries in Latin America. The plant also housed a research department which worked to improve materials and processes to deter forgeries. The plant was the target of a terrorist bombing in 1977 with the site chosen specifically because it was printing currency for Latin American countries. The facility was used by American Bank Note until about 1984 after which the property has changed hands several times, undergone a series of renovations, and been designated a New York City landmark. As of 2024, it has been subdivided, with major tenants including the John V. Lindsay Wildcat Academy Charter School and the New York City Human Resources Administration. ## Previous land use Until the late 19th century, the land where the plant stands was part of the village of West Farms in Westchester County. The area that is now the Barretto Street block was part of the 85-acre (34 ha) estate of wealthy tea merchant Edward G. Faile, where the Faile Mansion (known as Woodside) was built in 1832. The area was annexed to New York City in 1874. In 1904, the estate was sold to the Central Realty, Bond & Trust Company for about $1 million (equivalent to $ in ), including 1,299 lots "bounded by Dongan Street, Intervale Avenue, Southern Boulevard, Longwood Avenue, Lafayette Avenue, Hunt's Point Road, Gilbert Place, and the Bronx River". In September 1908, a portion of the estate comprising "over 400 lots" was acquired by the George F. Johnson's Sons Company, a real-estate developer building two-family houses in the Bronx. In November of that year, 123 lots were resold to American Bank Note, including "all the property on the northerly side of Lafayette Ave, from Manida St. to the tracks of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad ... all the property on both sides of Garrison Ave, from Manida St. to Lafayette Ave ... all the property between these boundaries except eighteen lots on Manida Street ... upon which two-family houses are being erected." In 1910, the size of the Barretto Street block was increased as a result of a land swap between American Bank Note and the city government. The block gained a strip of land on the northeast side of the property and Barretto Street was moved slightly north of its original location. ## Land acquisition and construction The American Bank Note Company was formed on April 29, 1858, when seven large engraving firms (Toppan, Carpenter & Co.; Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson; Danforth, Perkins & Co.; Jocelyn, Draper, Welch & Co.; Wellstood, Hay & Whitney; Bald, Cousland & Co.; and John E. Gavit) merged. The combined company's first printing plant was at Wall and William Streets, Manhattan, in a building which would later become the United States Custom House and eventually National City Bank. They moved to 142 Broadway in 1867 and to 86 Trinity Place in 1884. By 1908 they had plants on Trinity Place, on Sixth Avenue, and other locations in Manhattan as well as in Boston and Philadelphia. In 1908, American Bank Note built a new building at 70 Broad Street, Manhattan, into which they moved their administrative and sales offices. In parallel with this effort, the company was looking for a separate location into which they could move their production facilities; they felt that housing administration and production in separate locations would increase efficiency. The search culminated in the 1908 purchase of a large tract of land including the Barretto Street block from George Johnson. In his 1913 history of the Bronx, Harry Cook noted that "The choice of its present site in the Hunt's Point section of the Bronx was the result of a [thorough] canvas of all the available sections in Greater New York". One factor in the site selection was proximity to the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad line; discussions were held with the railroad to ensure they would be able to handle the plant's "considerable freight delivery needs" totaling 10,000 short tons (9,100 t) per year of paper and other supplies. The sale closed on November 20, 1908. The New York Times wrote that they expected the Trinity Place plant would be sold once the new Bronx facility was in operation. The total cost for the project was to be greater than $2 million ($ in ), with American Bank Note having a current capitalization of $10 million ($ in ). Wages for most employees were to be $40 to $75 ($ to $ in ) per week for "the highest class of skilled labor", and construction plans included housing for the workers. Robert E. Simon of the Henry Morgenthau Company estimated that within two or three years of American Banknote's relocation, taxable values in the neighborhood would increase by $5 million ($ in ). It was anticipated that 2,500 to 3,000 people would be employed initially, with the plant being sized to accommodate growth to 5,000. American Bank Note engaged the architecture firm of Kirby, Petit & Green (who also designed the company's downtown headquarters) for the building design. Kirby, Petit & Green designed several printing plants around this time, including San Francisco's Hearst Building in 1908, housing the printing plant for the San Francisco Examiner, and a plant in Garden City, Long Island, for the Country Life Press in 1910. The firm was preparing preliminary plans before the land purchase was completed. ### Design evolution The New York Times reported on May 23, 1909, that construction was "about ready to begin", describing a design which was abandoned before the end of that year. This initial design included a long wing running the length of the Lafayette Avenue frontage, where the engraving and lithographing departments would be housed. Two additional wings, running along the Tiffany and Garrison sides of the property, would enclose a storage building in the V-shaped central area. Each of these wings was an independent structure, with all four buildings interconnected. By this time, a large-scale model had already been constructed based on this initial design although the Times said that the design represented by the model might still "be subjected to some minor changes". A 1909 article published in Printing Art (reprinted in The Cement Age), described a prototype design for "an ideal printing plant". The final design appears to have been influenced by this, as the constructed plant more closely resembles this "ideal" design than the original one shown in the New York Times article. The design change was driven by the tenets of the newly emerging field of industrial engineering; rather than build standardized buildings which were then filled with machines, the machine spaces were designed to optimize production, and then the buildings were designed to enclose the production lines. The original plan provided for a single entrance to the building complex, about which the Times wrote, "This, of course, is made necessary by the character of much of the company's business; but an entire block of buildings without a rear entrance or a side door is certainly entitled to rank as a structural novelty." In contrast to the Times, the Landmarks Preservation Commission noted in their 2008 report that this single-entrance configuration, "though characteristic of nineteenth-century industrial design, was not particularly adapted to the needs of the American Bank Note Company operation." As built, the Tiffany Street entrance is recessed behind four arched openings on the west façade, which also includes a loading dock spanning most of the west side of the building. ## Initial configuration The initial 1911 construction consisted of only two buildings: the long and tall but narrow office wing along Lafayette Avenue, and the large press building at right angles to it. Several additions were made over the next few years. Typical of printing plants, the buildings have an open plan, concrete floors, and high ceilings to accommodate large presses. Column spacing is 40 feet (12 m) in places, with floors typically rated for 120 pounds per square foot (5.7 kPa) live loads. Some areas have 21-foot (6.4 m) ceilings. The buildings sit on a roughly pentagonal block bordered by Garrison Avenue, Tiffany Street, Lafayette Avenue, and Barretto Street, with Barretto curving to form two sides. In 1913, Harry Cook described the plant as "mammoth".The New York Times wrote in 1992 that the site had an "unabashedly industrial look" and noted that Architecture & Building Magazine had referred to its "arsenal-like appearance with a pervading sense of strength and security". The site included 200 presses, a private restaurant, hospital, laundry, machine and carpenter shops, and laboratories where special inks were formulated. The electrical requirements were exceptional for the day, and required special provisioning by the New York Edison Company. In addition to lighting, loads included 500 motors (compared to 300 at the Trinity Place plant) driving the presses, pumps, and other machinery. The switchgear was in the basement. The plant was designed to use individual electric motors to drive each press ("unit drive"), as opposed to the drive line shafting system in common use. Unit drive was an advanced technology for the time, only becoming widespread in the 1920s. The design of the building included a large amount of conduit and wiring to support the motors' electrical feeds. The Lafayette wing is a tall but narrow building which originally contained offices and workrooms for plate preparation; the façade runs the full length of the Lafayette Avenue frontage, almost 465 feet (142 m). In the center of the block is a nine story tower. As Lafayette Avenue slopes down to the west, the left-most portion of the building exposes several basement levels to the façade. The exterior is brick, with a structural framework of steel, allowing for wide unbroken arches filled with glass. It was originally constructed as three stories, three bays deep, with large windows topped by arches on the third story. The use of round arches and recessed brick spandrels were common in New York City industrial architecture of the late 19th century, evoking the German Rundbogenstil style of the 1830s and 1840s. Although the building used modern incandescent and arc lighting, the large windows also allowed daylight, necessary for visual inspection of detailed color printing work, to flood into the building. The steel framework allowed three times the window area as would have been possible in an all-brick structure. A three-story printing press building (now known as the Garrison wing) is at right angles to the Lafayette wing; it has larger open spaces, heavier floor slabs, and taller ceilings to accommodate the presses. The lower floor of this building included a vault for storing over 130,000 printing plates. The presses were on the upper floor; the saw-tooth roof incorporated many windows to supply natural illumination for inspecting plates and printed documents. The saw-tooth roof design had long been used in England because it admitted glare-free light through its north-facing windows but had been avoided in North America due to concerns about supporting snow loads, leakage, and condensation. It was only in the early part of the 20th century that engineering improvements made this type of roof practical in colder climates. The area to the west of the press building, along Tiffany Street and Garrison Avenue, originally had manicured lawns, a curved driveway, and a pedestrian walk flanked by lampposts. The lawns have since been turned into a paved parking lot, and most of the lampposts have been removed. ## Subsequent additions In 1910, a detached garage designed by Kirby, Petit & Green was built at the corner of Garrison Avenue and Barretto Street. The garage, expanded to twice its original size in 1928 to provide space for ink production, is now known as the North Building. In 1912, architect H. W. Butts added a single-story addition along the Barretto Street side of the property to hold a laundry and pulp mill, estimated to cost $12,000 ($ in ). In 1925, a fourth story, only two bays deep, was added to the top of the Lafayette building, using materials that closely matched the style of the original. The Barretto addition was raised to three stories in 1928, by architect Oscar P. Cadmus, providing space for additional presses and a machine shop. In the 1928 configuration, the buildings total 405,000 square feet (37,600 m²) of floor space, occupying a 178,000 square foot (16,500 m²) block. In addition to the buildings on the landmark block, American Bank Note developed other properties in the immediate area. In 1913, an employee welfare and research building was erected on Lafayette Avenue, on the other side of Barretto Street, also designed by H. W. Butts. A distribution center was added in 1925 and a paper storage warehouse in 1949. These additional buildings are mentioned (with their exact location and current disposition unspecified) in the Landmarks Preservation Commission report of 2008, but explicitly excluded from the landmark designation. ## Operations In the 1960s, the plant was processing over 5 million pieces of paper a day, and printing half of the securities of the New York Stock Exchange. Production included bank notes, postage and revenue stamps, stock and bond certificates, checks, traveler's checks, letters of credit, lottery tickets, and food stamps. Although the plant printed money for 115 countries around the world, it was best known for producing currencies for Latin America, including Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Haiti, and Cuba. The printing operation was organized into several divisions. Stocks, bonds, and postage stamps were handled by the engraved currency and steel plate divisions. A separate typographic division produced catalogs, booklets, folders, maps, railroad tickets and marketing materials for railroads, steamship lines and others. The plant produced its own special rag paper as well as the boxes used for shipping its completed products. Printed materials were first wrapped in paper, then encased in metal containers which were sealed with solder to make them waterproof, then inserted into the tightly fitting custom boxes. The company employed, according to New York Times columnist Meyer Berger, the world's most skilled engravers who served apprenticeships of ten years or longer. Some came from families which had been in the business for three or four generations. In 1958, the chief engraver was Will Ford, who had been with the company for 46 years. In 1963, there were 33 engravers on staff; they employed a house style favoring "folded robes, bare-chested men, and half-naked women who seem to be a cross between a Wagnerian soprano and the White Rock nymph." This was driven by stock exchange regulations which required stock certificates to include an image of "a human figure with visible areas of flesh" as these, along with the details of folded robes, were considered the hardest for a counterfeiter to duplicate. The company prided itself on having the best-equipped plant and most advanced research program in the industry, as well as employing the finest designers, engineers, and printers to whom it offered an advanced employee welfare program. An unusual job title at the company was counterfeiter; the job entailed attempting to produce copies of the company's own products. When attempts were successful, better engraving, paper, or inks were incorporated into the products, to increase the difficulty of fraudulently reproducing the documents. The counterfeiting office was in the tower (behind locked doors). One official counterfeiter was Will Ford's father, William F. Ford. Physical security included counting each piece of paper 33 times as it progressed from raw material to finished product. Items which failed quality inspections were burned in a furnace. A high level of security was necessary not just to prevent theft, but also to keep from leaking information about jobs. Events such as stock splits or issuance of bonds could involve orders for printing new certificates months in advance of the announcement; these print jobs were closely guarded secrets to prevent untimely disclosure of customers' plans. One of the company's less successful ventures was playing cards, which they produced for six years starting in 1908. Although the company's financial documents were of the finest quality their playing cards were not, lacking an opaque inner layer, thus allowing the face of a card to be read from the back if held in a strong light. The playing card business was sold to the Russell Playing Card Company in 1914. ## Bombing On March 20, 1977, the complex was damaged by a bomb planted by the FALN, a Puerto Rican terrorist group which had chosen to attack the plant because of its role in what they deemed "capitalistic exploitation". The explosive device, placed near the Lafayette Avenue entrance, broke windows as high as the fourth floor. This was one of two FALN attacks that day, the other being to the FBI Manhattan headquarters, where one person received minor injuries. A letter from the FALN claiming responsibility stated that the plant was targeted as a symbol of "Yanki repression and exploitation": > The American Bank Note Company for being one of the chief administrator's in the exploitation of the World's Working Class. For printing the stocks and bonds that decide which families will eat and live well and which one's will starve and die. This company is also the printer of the currency of Several Latin American countries, Mexico and Guatemala being two of them. This company has the economic power to control the flow of currency in all Latin American countries. Giving absolute unilateral monetary control to American Corporations. These were the fiftieth and fifty-first attacks attributed to the group in the previous three years. The next day, a second bomb threat against the plant was phoned into the Daily News. This turned out to be a hoax by a local resident who was distraught over personal issues. The man drove up to the plant while the police were sifting through rubble from the previous day's attack, announced that he had a hand grenade, and dropped it. The grenade failed to explode and was found to be a harmless practice device. ## Post–Bank Note By 1984 or 1985 (sources differ), with the plant having only about 500 employees, American Bank Note moved their printing facilities to a new site in Blauvelt, New York. In 1985, the site was purchased by Walter Cahn and Max Blauner who repurposed it as the Bronx Apparel Center. The purchase and renovation costs totaled $8.3 million ($ in ) The center occupied 146,000 square feet (13,600 m²) (about one third of the site), housing several tenant companies in the clothing and fabric industry. The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance also had space in the building during this time. Other tenants included a wine cellar and a homeless shelter, along with art and photography studios. Rents for the first tenants averaged $3.50 ($ in ) per square foot. In 1997, the John V. Lindsay Wildcat Academy Charter School opened their Hunts Point campus in the complex, occupying the fourth through sixth floors of the Lafayette wing. The campus, which serves ninth and tenth grade students, includes the school's culinary internship program, the student-run JVL Wildcat Café and a hydroponics garden. The space was renovated in 2005 using a $1 million grant from the Charles Hayden Foundation, at which time they added a 5,000-square-foot (460 m²) "professional-grade" kitchen for their new culinary program. The school renewed their lease in 2009, citing the 2005 improvements as a major factor in their decision to renew. The initial asking price was about $25 per square foot, although the final agreed rent was not made public. The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance had their first home in the complex in 1998, converting a previously vacant area into a 70-seat space for performances and workshops. There they hosted the Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre dance company, with roots in Latino and LGBTQ cultures. An anchor tenant with a long-term low-rent lease, they attracted other artists, who occupied spaces ranging from 600 square foot (56 m²) studios to entire floors. The deal was catalyzed by The Point, a neighborhood community development group. The Point recruited several local artists to lease 400-square-foot (37 m²) studios (another source says 600) in the building for $375 ($ in ) per month in exchange for the building's owners donating space to the dance company, which at the time was using The Point's building across the street. Aviles stated a desire to sign a ten-year lease in the building. In 2002, Lady Pink organized a group of female graffiti artists to paint an anti-war mural on a brick wall on the Barretto Street side of the property. The group revisited the site for several years. In 2013, the wall was torn down by the site's new owners. The site was purchased by Taconic Investment Partners and Denham Wolf Real Estate Services in January 2008 for $32.5 million ($ in ); they invested another $37 million ($ in ) on renovations. Denham Wolf had a history of working with nonprofit and arts groups. The New York Times reported that "the new owners hope to make the building into a mecca for cultural groups that have been priced out of Manhattan". Rents were estimated to be $20 to $30 per square foot, with the possibility of tax breaks reducing that number. At the time, comparable rents were in the mid $30s to $40 elsewhere in the Bronx and around $50 in midtown Manhattan. In 2010, the Sunshine Business Incubator began operations in the site, occupying 11,000 square feet (1,000 m²). Small business and startups could rent small amounts of space (as little as just one desk), with access to shared facilities such as meeting rooms, and a reception area. Leases were available on a month-to-month basis. The incubator targeted startups in the fields of new media, technology, biomedicine, healthcare and professional services. In his 2014 State of the Borough address, borough president Ruben Diaz Jr. spoke of a "transformation" taking place in the Bronx, with economic growth from new businesses moving into the borough. He noted that the building housed the Sunshine Business Incubator which had "helped over 70 small companies take root through shared space and creative partnerships" as part of the "New Bronx". Sunshine left the Bank Note building in 2014 with eight years left to run on its lease, and ceased operations completely in 2016. In 2013, the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance left the building when Taconic Investment Partners refused to extend their lease at the current rate, instead offering a one-year extension at double the rent. According to Academy co-founder Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Taconic "failed to keep a promise it made when it bought the building five years ago, to maintain the building's character as a mecca for the arts in Hunts Point". Rice-Gonzalez also said that Taconic initially demanded a payment equal to six months rent and threatened legal action when the Academy moved out before the expiration of their lease, although they ultimately withdrew that demand. The New York City Human Resources Administration (HRA) signed a 20-year lease in 2013, intending to move into approximately half of the 400,000 square feet (37,000 m²) available space in the complex. The move was completed in late 2014, combining existing offices at four locations to provide services to 1,700 clients daily in the areas of child support enforcement, home health care, Medicaid, food stamps, and HIV/AIDS assistance from this single location. Local 371, which represents the HRA employees, was opposed to the move, citing transportation issues and an inadequate number of bathrooms in the building. Bronx Community Board 2 was also opposed to the move with district manager Rafael Salamanca noting concerns over police presence and street lighting. Taconic Investment Partners sold the site to a partnership of two real estate investment firms, Madison Marquette and Perella Weinberg, for $114 million ($ in ) in 2014. , Madison Marquette manages the building, which it markets as The BankNote. In 2015, The Real Deal described the building as "one of the most architecturally distinctive office properties in the Bronx". ### Landmark status The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the site as a New York City landmark in 2008, observing that it was "one of nearly 200 factories and related sites that the Commission has named as landmarks since 2002, as part of its goal to preserve the City's industrial heritage." A commemorative plaque installed in the Lafayette Avenue entrance lobby calls out the "crenellated tower", "massive brick piers", and "saw-tooth skylights" as significant architectural details. Landmarks Commission Chairman Robert B. Tierney was quoted in the official announcement as saying: > The plant is notable not only for its commanding presence in the neighborhood and from other vantage points in the Bronx, but also for the sweep of multistory arcades across the front façade and its nine-story medieval-style tower. The announcement also cited "monumental arcades", the "Gothic-inspired details", and the "crenellated parapet of the central tower" as significant architectural features. The building design emphasizes security by deliberately limiting access to a single entrance, despite having over 1,500 feet (460 m) of street frontage. Benika Morokuma, of the Municipal Art Society, described the building in her testimony supporting the landmark designation: > The facade of the plant is a clear example of the expressive factory design of the New York City around the turn of the twentieth century ... The austere and huge horizontal massing of the main part of the printing facility and the Gothic tower, which emphasizes the symmetry of the main façade on Lafayette Avenue, create an arsenal-like appearance and contribute to create sense of security that is closely associated with its line of business. ## Transportation The building is adjacent to the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad tracks (now the Hell Gate Line of the Northeast Corridor). When the plant was built, the railroad announced its intention to extend the sidings at Hunts Point and build a freight house to serve the site. As of 2023, the Penn Station Access project is expected to provide Metro North service from a new Hunts Point station, which is expected to be completed by 2027. The site is one block away from Bruckner Boulevard with private parking adjacent to the Garrison wing. The nearest subway stations are Hunts Point Avenue and Longwood Avenue, providing access to Manhattan via the . The Bx6 bus line runs along Hunts Point Avenue. Bicycle access is via the South Bronx Greenway. ## See also - List of New York City Designated Landmarks in the Bronx

Blockhaus d'Éperlecques

Second World War bunker complex in Pas-de-Calais, France

The Blockhaus d'Éperlecques (, also referred to as "the Watten bunker" or simply "Watten") is a Second World War bunker, now part of a museum, near Saint-Omer in the northern Pas-de-Calais département of France, and only some 14.4 kilometers (8.9 miles) north-northwest from the more developed La Coupole V-2 launch facility, in the same general area. The bunker, built by Nazi Germany under the codename Kraftwerk Nord West (Powerplant Northwest) between March 1943 and July 1944, was originally intended to be a launching facility for the V-2 (A-4) ballistic missile. It was designed to accommodate over 100 missiles at a time and to launch up to 36 daily. The facility would have incorporated a liquid oxygen factory and a bomb-proof train station to allow missiles and supplies to be delivered from production facilities in Germany. It was constructed using the labour of thousands of prisoners of war and forcibly conscripted workers used as slave labourers. The bunker was never completed as a result of the repeated bombing by the British and United States air forces as part of Operation Crossbow against the German V-weapons programme. The attacks caused substantial damage and rendered the bunker unusable for its original purpose. Part of the bunker was subsequently completed for use as a liquid oxygen factory. It was captured by Allied forces at the start of September 1944, though its true purpose was not discovered by the Allies until after the war. V-2s were instead launched from Meillerwagen-based mobile batteries which were far less vulnerable to aerial attacks. The bunker is preserved as part of a privately owned museum that presents the history of the site and the German V-weapons programme. It has been protected by the French state as a monument historique since 1986. ## Background The A-4 ballistic missile (referred to as the V-2 from September 1944) was developed by the Germans between 1939 and 1944. It was regarded by Adolf Hitler as a Wunderwaffe (wonder weapon) that he believed to be capable of turning the tide of the war. Its operational deployment was restricted by several factors. Large supplies of cryogenic liquid oxygen (LOX) were required as the oxidizer to fuel the missiles. LOX evaporates rapidly, necessitating a source reasonably close to the firing site in order to minimise loss through evaporation. Germany and the occupied countries did not at that time have sufficient manufacturing capacity for the amount of LOX required for a full-scale A-4 campaign; the total production capacity in 1941 and 1942 was about 215 tons daily, but each A-4 launch required about 15 tons. As the missile was intended for use against London and southern England, its operational range of 320 km (200 mi) meant that the launch sites had to be located fairly close to the English Channel or southern North Sea coasts, in northern France, Belgium or the western Netherlands. This was within easy reach of the Allied air forces, so any site would have to be able to resist or evade the expected aerial bombardments. Various concepts were mooted for the A-4's deployment in a March 1942 study by Walter Dornberger, the head of the A-4 development project at the Peenemünde Army Research Center. He suggested that the missiles should be based in heavily defended fixed sites of a bunker-style design similar to the massive submarine pens then under construction in occupied France and Norway. The rockets could be stored in such sites, armed, fuelled from an on-site LOX production plant, and launched. This offered significant technical advantages; not only would the LOX loss be minimised, but the complex process of pre-launch testing would be simplified. A high rate of fire could be sustained as the facility could effectively operate like a production line, sending a steady flow of missiles to the launch pads. The submarine pens and other Atlantic Wall fortifications had been built in 1940 and 1941, when the Germans had air superiority and could deter Allied air attacks. By 1942 this advantage had been lost to the United States Army Air Forces, which had begun deploying to England in May 1942, and a greatly expanded Royal Air Force. The German Army preferred an alternative approach which would use trailer-style mobile launch platforms called Meillerwagen accompanied by testing and fuelling equipment mounted on railway cars or trucks. Although this configuration was far less efficient and would have a much lower rate of fire, it would have the great advantage of presenting a much smaller target for the Allied air forces. The Army was not convinced that fixed bunkers could resist repeated air attacks and was particularly concerned about the vulnerability of the launch sites' road and rail links, which were essential for resupplying them with missiles and fuel. In November 1942, Hitler and Minister of Munitions Albert Speer discussed possible launch configurations and examined models and plans of the proposed bunkers and mobile launchers. Hitler strongly preferred the bunker option, though he also gave the go-ahead for the production of mobile launchers. Two different bunker designs had been prepared: the B.III-2a design envisaged preparing the missile for launch inside the bunker, then transporting it outside to a launch pad, while the B.III-2b design would see the missile being elevated from within the bunker to a launch pad on the roof. Speer gave orders that two bunkers were to be constructed by the Organisation Todt construction group to a "special fortification standard" (Sonderbaustärke), requiring a steel-reinforced concrete ceiling 5 m (16 ft) thick and walls 3.5 m (11 ft) thick. They would be built near the coasts opposite England, one on the Côte d'Opale near Boulogne-sur-Mer and the other on the Cotentin Peninsula near Cherbourg. Each would be capable of launching 36 missiles a day, would hold sufficient supplies of missiles and fuel to last three days, and would be manned by 250 troops. ## Design and location In December 1942, Speer ordered Peenemünde officers and engineers (including Colonel Gerhard Stegmair, Dr Ernst Steinhoff and Lieutenant-Colonel Georg Thom) to tour the Artois region in northwest France and locate a suitable site for an A-4 launch facility. The site chosen was just to the west of the small town of Watten, in the Forest of Éperlecques, near Saint-Omer in the Pas-de-Calais department. It was given the cover name of Kraftwerk Nord West (Northwest Power Plant). The location was conveniently close to the main railway line between Calais and Saint-Omer, the canalised river Aa, main roads and electric grid lines. Situated 177 km (110 mi) from London, it was far enough inland to be safe from naval guns and it was sheltered to an extent by a ridge that rises to a height of 90 m (300 ft) to the north. At nearby Saint-Omer, there was a major Luftwaffe base which was capable of providing air defence for the area. There were existing gravel and sand quarries as well as cement works in the vicinity, which would help with the enormous amount of material that would be needed for the construction works. The quantities required were very substantial indeed; 200,000 tons of concrete and 20,000 tons of steel would be required to build the facility. When US Army Major General Lewis H. Brereton inspected the site after it had been captured by the Allies, he described the bunker as "more extensive than any concrete constructions we have in the United States, with the possible exception of Boulder Dam." The Watten bunker was to be built to a design based on the B.III-2a bunker, though substantially larger. The Germans had originally planned to build a separate LOX plant at Stenay but this option was abandoned in favour of installing a LOX production facility within the Watten bunker. The bunker consisted of three main elements. The main part of the building was a giant structure some 92 m (302 ft) wide and 28 m (92 ft) high, housing the LOX plant and a vault where missiles would be assembled and prepared. Its walls were up to 7 m (23 ft) thick and the bunker's working levels descended 6 m (20 ft) below ground. The plant would house five Heylandt compressors, each capable of producing about 10 tons of LOX per day. About 150 tons of LOX were to be stored in insulated tanks on-site. The facility was intended to store up to 108 missiles and enough fuel to supply three days' worth of launches. The Germans planned to fire up to 36 rockets a day from the site. On the north side of the building was a fortified standard gauge railway station, linked to the main Calais-Saint-Omer line at Watten via a 1.2 km (0.75 mi) spur line. Missiles, warheads and other components would be shipped to the station and transported on trucks into the main area of the bunker. Here the rockets were to be assembled, raised into a vertical position and fuelled and armed. From the arming halls, they would be moved to either end of the building through pivoting doors 18 m (59 ft) high. They would exit through the south face of the building and would be moved on tracks to the launch pads. There were no doors on the exit portals so chicanes were installed in the exit passage to deflect the blast of rockets being launched from outside. Launches would be overseen from a command tower located in the centre of the south side of the bunker, overlooking the launch pads. To the north of the bunker, the Germans erected a bomb-proof power station with a 2,000 hp (1.5 MW) generating capacity. The site was initially powered from the main electricity grid, but it was intended that it would have its own independent power source to minimise the likelihood of disruption. Also associated with the Watten complex was a radar tracking site at Prédefin, 29 km (18 mi) south of Saint-Omer. A Giant Würzburg radar system was installed there to follow the trajectories of V-2s being launched from Watten. The intention was to follow the trajectory for as long as possible so that the accuracy of the missile launches could be determined. ## Construction The site was designed in January and February 1943 by engineers from the Peenemünde research facility and the Organisation Todt. On 25 March 1943 the construction plans were presented to Hitler, who immediately gave the go-ahead for the project to begin. The construction firm Holzman & Polanski was awarded the contract and 6,000 workers from Building Battalion 434 started construction that same month using plans by Franz Xaver Dorsch, Construction Director at the Organisation Todt. It was envisaged that the structure would be ready by the end of July 1943, though not its wiring and plant, and it was intended that it would be fully operational by 1 November 1943. The workforce consisted of a mixture of German specialists and forcibly conscripted Frenchmen from the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO). They were supplemented by Belgian, Dutch, French, Polish, Czech and Soviet prisoners of war and civilian conscripts, who were used as slave labour. The labour force also included many French political prisoners and Spanish Republicans who had fled to France after General Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War but had then been interned by the invading Germans. The non-German workers lived in two camps officially known as Organisation Todt Watten Zwangsarbeitslager 62 (Forced Labour Camp 62) about 2 km (1.2 mi) distant from the site, near the village of Éperlecques. The camps were guarded by the French civil police with the assistance of Belgian and Dutch Nazis and Russian POWs who had volunteered for guard duty. Although escape attempts were punished by immediate execution, there were up to three escapes daily with external assistance. The commandant of the camp is said to have complained that it would have been easier to "guard a sack of fleas". Over 35,000 foreign workers passed through the camps during the period in which they were operational. The labourers worked in 12-hour shifts of 3,000–4,000 men, with three 20-minute breaks during each shift. The work continued around the clock, seven days a week, under giant floodlights during the night. The living and working conditions were extremely harsh, especially for the political prisoners and the eastern Europeans, who were given especially punitive treatment due to their status as the most expendable members of the workforce. For the non-German workers, falling ill or being unable to work through injury was the equivalent of a death sentence, as they would either be left to die or be transported back to the concentration camps from which they had been brought. A German commission that inspected the labour camps in the area in late 1943 commented: "The Eastern [European] worker is very tough. He works at his job until he falls flat on his face in the mire, and all that is left for the doctor to do is to issue the death certificate." A large supply dump was established at Watten next to the River Aa. This site was eventually used to store material required for all the V-weapon sites in the Saint-Omer area. Building materials were brought there by barges and trains where they were unloaded onto a Decauville narrow-gauge railway for transportation to the construction site, where concrete mixers operated day and night. A 90 kV power line running to a transformer at Holque north of Watten provided electricity. An old quarry at Wizernes codenamed Schotterwerk Nordwest (Gravel Quarry Northwest), some 12 km (7.5 mi) south of Watten, was also converted into a storage dump to supply the Watten facility. ## Discovery and Allied attacks In early April 1943, an Allied agent reported "enormous trenches" being excavated at the Watten site, and on 16 May 1943 an RAF reconnaissance mission led to Allied photographic interpreters noticing unidentified activity there. Other large facilities were observed to be under construction elsewhere in the Pas-de-Calais. The purpose of the construction works was very unclear; Lord Cherwell, Winston Churchill's scientific adviser, admitted that he had little idea what "these very large structures similar to gun emplacements" were but he believed that "if it is worth the enemy's while to go to all the trouble of building them it would seem worth ours to destroy them." At the end of May, the British Chiefs of Staff ordered that aerial attacks be carried out against the so-called "heavy sites" being built by the Germans. On 6 August, Duncan Sandys, who headed a high-level Cabinet committee to coordinate the British defence against the German V-weapons, recommended that the Watten site should also be attacked because of the progress being made in its construction. The British Chiefs of Staff noted that a daylight attack by US bombers was under consideration but they raised objections to the proposal, as the Air Staff thought that Watten had nothing to do with rockets, suggesting that instead it might be merely a "protected operations room". The timing of the first raid was influenced by advice given by Sir Malcolm McAlpine, the chairman of the construction company Sir Robert McAlpine, who suggested that the Watten site should be attacked while the concrete was still setting. On 27 August 1943, 187 B-17 Flying Fortresses of the US 8th Air Force attacked the site with devastating effect. The fortified train station on the north side of the bunker was especially badly damaged, as concrete had just been poured there. Dornberger later wrote that following the attack the site was "a desolate heap of concrete, steel, props and planking. The concrete hardened. After a few days the shelter was beyond saving. All we could do was roof in a part and use it for other work." The bombing killed and injured hundreds of the slave workers on site; although the Allies had sought to avoid casualties by timing the raid with what they thought was a change of shifts, the shift pattern had been changed by the Germans at the last minute to achieve the day's work quota. Only 35% of the Watten bunker had been completed by this time. It was clearly no longer possible to use it as a launch site, but the Germans still needed LOX production facilities to supply V-2 sites elsewhere. After surveying the site in September and October 1943, Organisation Todt engineers determined that the northern part of the facility was irretrievably damaged but decided to focus on completing the southern part to serve as a LOX factory. One of OT's engineers, Werner Flos, came up with an idea to protect the bunker from bombardment by building it up from the roof first. This was done by initially constructing a concrete plate, flat on the ground, which was 5 m (16 ft) thick and weighed 37,000 tons. It was incrementally raised by hydraulic jacks and then supported by walls which were built underneath it as it was raised, becoming the roof. The resulting concrete cavern was intended to be used by the Germans as a bombproof liquid oxygen factory. The thickness of the roof was chosen on the assumption that Allied bombs were incapable of penetrating such a depth of concrete; the Germans, however, were unaware of the British development of earthquake bombs. The Germans' main focus of attention switched instead to Schotterwerk Nordwest, the former quarry at nearby Wizernes, where work had been ongoing to build a bombproof V-2 storage facility. This project was expanded to turn the quarry into a fixed launch facility. Plans were put into effect to build a huge concrete dome – now open to the public as the museum of La Coupole – under which missiles would be fuelled and armed in a network of tunnels before being transported outside for launching. The Allies carried out further heavy bombing against both the Watten and Wizernes sites with little initial effect on the buildings themselves, although the rail and road network around them was systematically destroyed. On 3 July 1944, Oberkommando West gave permission to stop construction at both sites, which had been so disrupted by bombing that work could no longer proceed. Three days later an Allied raid succeeded in wrecking the interior of the Watten bunker with a Tallboy bomb that brought down part of the roof. Finally, on 18 July 1944, Hitler decreed that plans for launching missiles from bunkers need no longer be pursued. Dornberger's staff subsequently decided to continue minor construction at Watten "for deception purposes". The site itself was now useless, as the Germans recognised when they wryly codenamed it Concrete Lump, and the liquid oxygen generators and machinery were transferred to the Mittelwerk V-2 factory in central Germany, well away from Allied bombers. The Watten site was captured on 4 September 1944 by Canadian forces. The Germans had evacuated it a few days earlier and removed the pumps which kept the cavernous basement free from water; not long afterwards it began to flood. This made a substantial amount of the bunker inaccessible to the Allies. ### Air raids ## Subsequent investigations and utilisation The bunker was inspected on 10 September 1944 by the French atomic scientist Frédéric Joliot-Curie, accompanied by Sandys. Following the visit, Sandys ordered a Technical Inter-Services Mission under Colonel T.R.B. Sanders to investigate the sites at Mimoyecques, Siracourt, Watten, and Wizernes, collectively known to the Allies as the "Heavy Crossbow" sites. Sanders' report was submitted to the War Cabinet on 19 March 1945. Despite the capture of Watten, it was still not known at this time what the site had been intended for. Sanders noted that "the purpose of the structures was never known throughout the period of intensive reconnaissance and attack". Based on the discovery of large aluminium tanks installed in the main part of the bunker, he opined that the Germans had intended to use it as a factory for the production of hydrogen peroxide for use in the fuelling of V-1 and V-2 missiles. He ruled out the possibility that it could have been used for LOX production and concluded, erroneously, that "the site had no offensive role." He recommended that (unlike the Mimoyecques and Wizernes sites) the Watten bunker presented no threat to the UK's security and "there is thus no imperative need, on that account, to ensure the destruction of the workings." The bunker was targeted again by the Allies in February 1945, this time to test the newly developed CP/RA Disney bomb – a 4,500 lb (2,000 kg) concrete-piercing rocket-assisted bomb designed to double the normal impact velocity, and thereby increase the penetration, of the projectile. The site had been chosen for testing purposes in October 1944 as it had the largest accessible interior area of the targets under consideration and was furthest from an inhabited town. On 3 February 1945, a B-17 of the US Eighth Air Force dropped a Disney bomb on the Watten bunker and scored a hit over the wall section, but the results were inconclusive and the Air Force was not able to determine how well the bomb had penetrated the concrete. Although Disney bombs were used operationally on a number of occasions, the weapon's introduction came too late to be of any significance in the war effort. In January 2009 the body of the Disney bomb was extracted from the roof, where it had embedded itself. ## Preservation The Watten bunker was inspected again on 20 June 1951 by an Anglo-French commission to determine whether it was capable of being reused for military purposes. The British Assistant Military Attaché, Major W.C. Morgan, reported to the Director of Military Intelligence at the War Office that the main part of the bunker had not been significantly damaged by bombing and that although it was flooded, if it was patched and drained "the building could be quickly made ready to receive oxygen liquifying plant machinery, or for any other purpose requiring a large and practically bomb-proof building." No further military use was made of the bunker and the land on which it stands reverted to private ownership. It was left abandoned for many years before the owners decided to redevelop the site. In 1973, the bunker was opened to the public for the first time under the name of Le Blockhaus d'Éperlecques. The ownership was taken over by Hubert de Mégille in the mid-1980s and on 3 September 1986 the French state declared it a monument historique. The area around the bunker has been re-forested, though it is still heavily scarred by bomb craters, and various items of Second World War military equipment (including a V-1 on a launch ramp) are on display alongside paths around the site. An open-air trail leads to and around the bunker with interpretative signs posted at various points to tell the story of the site and the German V-weapons programme. In 2009, the museum welcomed 45,000 visitors. ## See also - Fortress of Mimoyecques - La Coupole

Interstate 75 in Michigan

Interstate Highway in Michigan, United States

Interstate 75 (I-75) is a part of the Interstate Highway System that runs north–south from Miami, Florida, to Sault Ste. Marie in the Upper Peninsula of the US state of Michigan. I-75 enters the state from Ohio in the south, north of Toledo, and runs generally northward through Detroit, Flint, and Bay City, crosses the Mackinac Bridge, and ends at the Canadian border in Sault Ste. Marie. The freeway runs for approximately 396 miles (637 km) on both of Michigan's major peninsulas. The landscapes traversed by I-75 include Southern Michigan farmland, northern forests, suburban bedroom communities, and the urban core of Detroit. The freeway also uses three of the state's monumental bridges to cross major bodies of water. There are four auxiliary Interstates in the state related to I-75, as well as nine current or former business routes, with either Business Loop I-75 (BL I-75) or Business Spur I-75 (BS I-75) designations. The freeway bears several names in addition to the I-75 designation. The southern segment was called the Detroit–Toledo Expressway during planning in the 1950s and 1960s. Through Detroit, I-75 is the Fisher Freeway or the Walter P. Chrysler Freeway, named for pioneers in the auto industry. Sections on either side of the Mackinac Bridge are the G. Mennen Williams Freeway or the Prentiss M. Brown Freeway, named for politicians who helped get the bridge built. Officially, the entire length is the American Legion Memorial Highway, after the organization of the same name. Various sections carry components of the four Great Lakes Circle Tours in the state. Several Indian trails spanned the state along the general path of the contemporary freeway. After statehood, several of these were converted into plank roads that later became some of the first state highways. In the 1920s, five of these were added to the United States Numbered Highway System: US Highway 2 (US 2), US 10, US 24, US 25, and US 27. In the 1950s, a Michigan Turnpike was proposed as a tolled, controlled-access highway in the Lower Peninsula. After passage of the Federal Highway Act of 1956, this turnpike proposal was shelved as a free Interstate Highway was planned. Construction started in 1957, signs went up in 1959, and I-75 was completed in 1973. Since completion, the freeway has been upgraded with the construction of the Zilwaukee Bridge near Saginaw and improved connections to the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit. ## Route description Known as "Michigan's Main Street", I-75 is listed on the National Highway System (NHS) for its entire length; the NHS is a network of roadways important to the country's economy, defense, and mobility. The freeway is the busiest in the state: between M-8 (Davison Highway) and McNichols Road in Detroit approximately 194,300 vehicles used the freeway on average each day in 2010; in contrast the lowest traffic level was 3,208 vehicles between the M-48 and M-80 interchanges in Chippewa County. I-75 carries segments of all four Great Lakes Circle Tours in the state. It is also the only highway located on both Michigan's Upper and Lower peninsulas (UP and LP, respectively). Between the Ohio state line and Kawkawlin, I-75 contains between a minimum of six and a maximum of ten lanes total; other sections vary between four and six lanes in total. ### Lake Erie shore and the Downriver communities Crossing the state line north of Toledo, Ohio, I-75 enters Michigan in Monroe County carrying the Lake Erie Circle Tour (LECT) near the North Maumee Bay of Lake Erie. The freeway runs parallel to the shoreline of the Great Lake and past the community of Luna Pier. Further north, I-75 passes to the southeast of Monroe and crosses the River Raisin between the city and the river mouth. North of the river, the freeway turns further inland running through farmland. Near Newport, I-275 splits off to the northwest and I-75 continues its northeastward trek through Monroe County. When it crosses the Huron River, the trunkline enters Wayne County between South Rockwood and Rockwood. On the north side of the county line, I-75 begins to run inland of, and parallel to, the Detroit River, entering the Downriver area. The freeway turns northerly after the interchange with M-85 (Fort Street) near Gibraltar, and the LECT departs I-75 to follow M-85 north of the interchange. The landscape transitions to suburban residential areas instead of farmland through this area. The freeway turns back northeasterly in Taylor and intersects the southern end of M-39 (Southfield Highway) in Lincoln Park. I-75 crosses the Ecorse River and passes through an industrial area of Metro Detroit. Farther north, the freeway spans the River Rouge in the southern part of Detroit. I-75 parallels M-85 (Fort Street) and follows the Detroit River as far east as the Ambassador Bridge. Near the bridge's approaches, the freeway turns 90° away from the river and intersects the eastern end of I-96 before turning again to follow the river further inland. From there, I-75 meets M-10 (Lodge Freeway) and M-5 (Grand River Avenue). East of Grand River, I-75 travels past Little Caesars Arena, home of the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons, and passes under M-1 (Woodward Avenue). East of Woodward, the freeway travels past both Comerica Park and Ford Field, homes of the Detroit Tigers and Detroit Lions professional sports teams, respectively. ### Detroit to the Tri-Cities Immediately east of Ford Field, I-75 turns northwesterly to follow the Chrysler Freeway away from the downtown Detroit area. The transition from the Fisher Freeway involves a set of one-lane ramps through the interchange with the connections to I-375 and M-3 (Gratiot Avenue). Heading north-northwesterly, I-75 passes to the east of the campus of Wayne State University and through an interchange with I-94 (Edsel Ford Freeway). The Chrysler Freeway passes to the west of Hamtramck and to the east of Highland Park, enclaves within Detroit. I-75 meets M-8 (Davison Freeway) and continues through residential areas of Detroit's northern side. North of M-102 (8 Mile Road), the freeway crosses out of Detroit and into Oakland County. The Chrysler Freeway jogs through the suburb of Hazel Park, site of the "worst freeway for accidents in Metro Detroit" at a curve near 9 Mile Road. Further north, I-75 intersects I-696 near 10 Mile Road. The freeway continues northward for about six miles (9.7 km) into Troy, where it turns westward. The route for I-75 zig-zags through Troy and Auburn Hills as the freeway alternates from north–south to east–west to bypass Pontiac. Near the M-59 interchange, I-75 passes the headquarters for Chrysler. Farther north, by the M-24 interchange, it runs near the former site of The Palace of Auburn Hills. The freeway traverses through additional suburban residential areas as it runs northwesterly away from Pontiac. These subdivisions end north of Clarkston, which is the location of the northern terminus for US 24. Continuing through Holly and Newark, the freeway transitions back to a rural, wooded setting and enters Genesee County. As I-75 approaches Grand Blanc, the landscape changes back to suburbs. I-475 (UAW Freeway) splits off to the north to bypass the east side of Flint, and then I-75 merges with US 23. The combined I-75/US 23 turns northerly to round the west side of the city. I-75/US 23 meets I-69 near the Bishop International Airport southwest of downtown Flint. The freeway continues northward along the western residential neighborhoods, encountering the northern end of I-475 near Mount Morris. I-75 passes to the west of Clio and the east of Birch Run, the latter home to a large outlet mall. From there, the trunkline travels through farmland in southern Saginaw County. ### Central Michigan I-75/US 23 enters the southern reaches of the suburban Tri-Cities at Bridgeport and proceeds northward through the area. The freeway passes to the east of downtown Saginaw. I-675 splits off to run westward into downtown, and I-75 curves around to the northwest to cross the Saginaw River on the Zilwaukee Bridge in the suburb of Zilwaukee. North of the river, I-675 reconnects to I-75, which continues northward into Bay County. The freeway passes to the west of Bay City, encountering the interchange marking the eastern end of US 10 and the western end of M-25. From there, I-75/US 23 curves northwesterly to bypass Kawkawlin before continuing north to the Standish area through farmlands inland from the Saginaw Bay. West of Standish, US 23 splits to follow the Lake Huron shoreline, and I-75 turns northwesterly to run inland. West of Sterling, the landscape changes again; in this area the freeway enters forest lands. I-75 continues northwestward through Arenac County and crosses into western Ogemaw County. M-30 passes under the freeway without an interchange as I-75 rounds the west side of West Branch. On the northwest side of that city, M-55 merges onto I-75, and the two highways turn to run concurrently westward into Roscommon County. East of Prudenville, M-55 splits from the freeway. I-75 turns northward to curve around the east of Houghton and Higgins lakes. Turning back to the northwest, the trunkline bypasses Roscommon to the south and transfers into southern Crawford County. About five miles (8.0 km) north of the county line, I-75 meets the northern end of US 127, the former US 27. ### Northern Michigan After the US 127 interchange, I-75 turns northward, and passes to the east of Grayling. There are a pair of interchanges on either end of town for BL I-75, and the southern one is a partial interchange; only northbound I-75 traffic may access the business loop and traffic entering the freeway may only access southbound I-75. There is no interchange further north for M-72; access to that highway is provided through the business loop. On the north side of Grayling, there is a full interchange for BL I-75/M-93 that provides the southbound I-75 connection to M-72 as well as access from both directions to Hartwick Pines State Park. Crossing into southern Otsego County, I-75 continues northward through Northern Michigan forests. It passes to the east of the community of Waters and Otsego Lake. North of exit 279, I-75 proceeds by the Gaylord Regional Airport and crosses the 45th Parallel, the halfway mark between the Equator and the North Pole by latitude. The freeway then traverses the west side of Gaylord and continues through forests in the northern sections of the county. North of Vanderbilt, I-75 enters southern Cheboygan County, assuming the G. Mennen Williams Freeway name. I-75 continues northward through Cheboygan County, passing the community of Indian River and spanning the river of the same name. North of town, the freeway traverses the area between Burt and Mullett lakes before intersecting the southern end of M-27; that highway provides access to Topinabee and Cheboygan. I-75 continues northward through tree farms and other agricultural properties in rural Cheboygan County. Cheboygan is accessible by way of interchanges for C-64 and C-66, a pair of county-designated highways in this area. North of C-66, I-75 turns northwesterly. The freeway meets the northern end of US 31 and picks up the Lake Michigan Circle Tour (LMCT) designation before entering Emmet County on the south side of Mackinaw City. I-75 then parallels the county line on the west side of the village, meeting the northern end of US 23. After that interchange, the Lake Huron Circle Tour (LHCT) merges in from the south. There is one more interchange along the freeway before I-75 ascends the approach to the Mackinac Bridge. ### Mackinac Bridge The Mackinac Bridge carries I-75 across the Straits of Mackinac that separate Michigan's Upper and Lower peninsulas; the straits also form the connection between Lakes Michigan and Huron. The structure, unlike the rest of the state highways in Michigan like I-75, is under the maintenance and control of the Mackinac Bridge Authority (MBA). The authority collects a toll from traffic that crosses the bridge, which as of January 1, 2012, is $4 for passenger cars and $5 per axle for commercial vehicles and motorhomes. In addition to cash, the MBA offers a pre-paid debit card option for the payment of tolls and accepts credit cards at the toll booths. The authority also provides a driver assistance program that will drive vehicles across the bridge at no additional charge; motorists who use the service have a fear of bridges. Because the bridge normally only allows motor vehicles, bicyclists and snowmobiles shuttled across are subject to fees. The authority maintains a small police department to patrol the bridge and escort vehicles across, and a pair of radio station transmitters that broadcast bridge conditions and travel information on AM 530 and AM 1610. ### Upper Peninsula North of the Mackinac Bridge, I-75 passes to the west of downtown St. Ignace, traveling between the Father Marquette National Memorial and Straits State Park. There is an interchange north of the toll plaza that marks the eastern end of US 2 in the state and the southern end of BL I-75. The LMCT departs I-75 to follow US 2 while the LHCT follows BL I-75 through town. The freeway curves around Chain Lake and the Mackinac County Airport and meets the northern end of the business loop near Castle Rock; the LHCT returns to I-75 at that interchange as well. Continuing northward, M-123 (Tahquamenon Trail) intersects from the west as the freeway parallels H-63 (Mackinac Trail), the former route of US 2. I-75 crosses the Carp River and follows the shores of St. Martin Bay before meeting M-134. At that interchange, the LHCT departs again to run eastward. Through this area, the freeway continues northeasterly, traversing the Eastern Unit of the Hiawatha National Forest. I-75 crosses the Pine River before entering Chippewa County. The freeway takes a more northerly track as it travels under M-48 without an interchange. Farther north, M-48 curves around to connect I-75 with Rudyard, and the freeway turns back to continue northeastward. About five miles (8.0 km) northeast of Rudyard, I-75 passes next to Chippewa County International Airport, the former Kincheloe Air Force Base in Kinross and Kincheloe. North of there in Dafter, the freeway intersects M-28 (9 Mile Road). Beyond that interchange, I-75 picks up the Lake Superior Circle Tour (LSCT) designation, which it carries the rest of the way north. On the south side of Sault Ste. Marie, the freeway meets BS I-75 and picks up the LHCT designation one more time. I-75 rounds the west side of the city, passes the Sault Ste. Marie Municipal Airport and the campus of Lake Superior State University before meeting the customs and toll plazas for the International Bridge. From there, I-75 crosses the two-lane bridge and terminates at the Canadian border. As of April 1, 2012, the toll rates on the bridge are $3 for passenger vehicles, $2.10 for commuters, and $4 per axle for commercial vehicles; currently the same toll rate is assessed in US dollars and Canadian dollars. Motorists have the option to pay with cash or an IQ Card, an electronic toll collection debit card that uses radio-frequency identification technology. ## History ### Indian trails to state highways Before Michigan became a state, the first land transportation corridors were the Indian trails. The French-Indian Trail ran through southeastern Michigan between Toledo, Monroe and Detroit. The Saginaw Trail ran north from Detroit to the Saginaw area where it connected with the original Mackinaw Trail that ran roughly parallel to, and west of, the contemporary I-75. Another path, the Cheboygan Trail, ran parallel to the contemporary freeway to the east between the West Branch area and Cheboygan. In the UP, an extension of the Mackinac Trail connected St. Ignace and Sault Ste. Marie. In the 19th century, the Michigan Legislature chartered private companies to build and operate plank roads or turnpikes in the state, many of which replaced the original Indian trails. These roads were originally made of oak planks, but later legislation permitted gravel as well. By the first decade of the 20th century, only 23 of the 202 chartered turnpikes were still in operation; many companies that received a charter never built their specified roadways. The remaining plank roads were turned over to the state or purchased by railway companies in the early part of the century. The State Trunkline Highway System was formed on May 13, 1913, and several sections of the system were designated along the course of the then-future I-75. Division 1 connected the Ohio state line northeasterly to Detroit, and Division 2 connected Detroit with Mackinaw City. A branch of Division 7 ran north from St. Ignace to Sault Ste. Marie. The system was signposted in 1919, and those highways were marked on maps for the first time. The first M-10 was designated along the highways from Ohio through Detroit to Standish. M-76 connected Standish with Grayling, where the first M-14 ran northward to Cheboygan. From there, M-10 connected to Mackinaw City. In the UP, M-12 connected St. Ignace with Sault Ste. Marie along a route to the east of the old Mackinac Trail. When the United States Numbered Highway System was formed on November 11, 1926, most of these highways were redesignated as part of the national system. From the state line northward, M-10 was included as a part of US 24 and US 25. At Detroit, M-10 was used as a part of US 10. North of Grayling, M-14 was redesignated as a part of US 27. M-12 was used for US 2. The Michigan State Highway Department (MSHD) rerouted US 2 in 1933 between Rogers Park and Sault Ste. Marie. The new routing followed Mackinac Trail instead of turning east to Cedarville and north to Sault Ste. Marie; the former routing was given the M-121 designation. ### Turnpikes and freeways By 1945, a divided highway designated Alternate US 24 (US 24A) was opened from the state line north to Erie. After World War II, the MSHD planned to convert several highways in the state to freeways. In planning maps from 1947, the contemporary I-75 corridor was included in the system that later became the Interstate Highway System. It was also included in the General Location of National System of Interstate Highways Including All Additional Routes at Urban Areas Designated in September 1955 that was released in 1955 as the federal government readied plans for the freeway system. The Michigan Turnpike Authority (MTA), an agency which was created in 1951, proposed the construction of a toll freeway to run north–south in the state. The original termini for the turnpike were Bridgeport and Rockwood. The state highway commissioner at the time, Charles Ziegler, distrusted a separate agency dealing with statewide road building at the time, and he worked to stall progress on any proposed turnpikes. Ziegler, who had a seat on the MTA board, publicly sparred with authority chairman George Higgins, even announcing that the MSHD would build a parallel freeway that would "reduce tolls on the turnpike 40 to 50 percent" according to consultants. Trucking interests in the state also opposed the projects, preferring a moderate gas tax increase over any tolls. Detroit denied the MTA permission to route a turnpike through the city over issues related to the River Rouge, Rouge Park and access across the right-of-way. After a lawsuit by City of Dearborn, the legislation creating the authority was upheld by the Michigan Supreme Court in 1955, and the authority was allowed to sell bonds for its Bridgeport–Rockwood and Detroit–Chicago toll roads. The original planning maps plotted the first turnpike to the west of Detroit, running near US 24 (Telegraph Road). This route was later proposed for I-75 itself; I-275 would have been the freeway to loop into downtown Detroit. The proposed length was increased by December 1955; the extended Michigan Turnpike would have run from a connection across the Ohio state line to Toledo north through Detroit and Saginaw and eventually to the southern end of the Mackinac Bridge. By the following April, any extensions were cancelled leaving the turnpike to its original termini; the east–west companion road was also cancelled at that time. The MTA proposed a state constitutional amendment in January 1956 that would allow the Michigan Legislature to issue state-guaranteed bonds for part of the MTA's construction expenses. According to The Wall Street Journal, the authority "struggled for survival" in the face of opposition from the MSHD just two months later; the department's actions impaired the authority's appropriations from the state legislature and its ability to sell the necessary bonds to pay for construction. When the federal government approved the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, Ziegler and the MSHD announced plans for a full freeway to run north through the Lower Peninsula and continue across to the Upper Peninsula. This announcement undermined the efforts to build the Michigan Turnpike. By August 1956, the MTA voted to reduce its operations to a skeleton staff, but moved forward in May 1957 on a bond sale to finance construction of the roadway. Financiers stated such a sale was only feasible if the turnpike was to be safe from competition. The Michigan Townships Association called for the abolition of the MTA in 1958. The legislature killed a bill to do so in June 1959, but it later voted to repeal the act that created the authority in 1962. ### Interstate Highway era The first sections of freeway for I-75 were opened in 1957, beginning with the southern section near the Ohio state line opened in October 1957. The Mackinac Bridge was opened to traffic on November 1, 1957; a new section of freeway and an interchange connected US 2 to the bridge on the northern end, and to US 27 and US 31 on the southern end. The MSHD formally proposed the I-75 number in 1958. On June 30 of that year, the first stretch of the "Fenton–Clio Expressway" opened. Construction on the Chrysler Freeway in Detroit started on January 30, 1959. The I-75 signs were first installed along the Detroit–Toledo Expressway in October 1959, replacing US 24A signage in the Monroe area, after the state waited for final approval of the numbering system to be used in the state. In November 1960, sections of freeway opened from Indian River north to the southern Mackinac Bridge approaches in Mackinaw City and from St. Ignace to Evergreen Shores, and by December, the section of freeway running between Evergreen Shores and M-123 was scheduled to open. In 1961, the MSHD had proposed that the section of I-75 south of Detroit to Toledo be built as an electronic highway under a bid through General Motors; the testing for such a roadway was ultimately done at Ohio State University instead. That same year the original Zilwaukee Bridge, a bascule bridge across the Saginaw River was opened, along with a section of freeway north to Kawkawlin. In October 1961, the first segment of I-75 near Grayling opened, connecting M-18 with the city. By the end of the year, the freeway was completed between Kinross and Dafter in the UP, and the former segment of US 27 between Grayling and Gaylord was turned back to local control. After this individual segment of freeway was completed, it left a gap between Gaylord and Indian River that was designated "To I-75" on maps for the former segment of US 27, and US 27 was truncated to about five miles (8.0 km) south of Grayling. The 12-mile (19 km) section of I-75 was opened between Gaylord and Waters in July 1962. Another temporary To I-75 designation was applied along US 10 and US 27 from Bay City to Grayling. In August, the section between Gaylord and Vanderbilt was completed. On October 25, the section of freeway from M-24 near Pontiac to the Flint area opened. Also late in the year, the freeway gap was filled in between Vanderbilt and Indian River. The International Bridge and its approaches opened in Sault Ste. Marie on October 31, 1962. The following year, a set of segments opened in the Detroit area. The freeway was extended south from Pontiac to 11 Mile Road with a connection along M-150 to M-102 (8 Mile Road). Another section opened to connect with US 24 (Telegraph Road) in the Woodhaven area; a To I-75 designation was added to connect along US 24 and M-102 to M-150. On the other end of the state, the gaps in the freeway across the UP were completed in 1963 as well, and the section of freeway in Northern Michigan was named the most scenic new highway in the US in 1963 by Parade magazine. The first part of the Chrysler Freeway opened to traffic on June 26, 1964, the southern mile (1.6 km) of which was designated I-375. The segment of I-75 through the Downriver suburbs of Detroit between the US 24 (Telegraph Road) connector and M-39 (Southfield Highway) was completed on December 28, 1966. The same year, I-75 was scheduled to open southward from 11 Mile Road to M-102 (8 Mile Road). In 1967, two segments of freeway opened. One was from Kawkawlin to Standish in October, and the other through Detroit extended I-75 along the Fisher Freeway in December. The first section of M-76 freeway from Standish northwesterly to Alger was scheduled to open in July 1968. A one-mile (1.6 km) section of the Chrysler Freeway through Detroit opened on December 19, 1968, and the remainder was scheduled to open on January 10, 1969. In 1970, I-75 through Detroit was completed, and two additional sections of M-76 were converted to freeway. The northern section ran from the US 27-to-I-75 transition south of Grayling to the Crawford–Roscommon county line, and the second was an extension from Alger to the West Branch area. The first ice-detection system in the state was installed on the River Rouge bridges in the Detroit area in an attempt to maximize driver safety. The next year, the last section of the Chrysler Freeway in Hazel Park was finished when an interchange for the then-unbuilt I-696 was completed. Another segment of the M-76 freeway was completed at the same time, bypassing Roscommon. The final section between Alger and Roscommon was opened on November 1, 1973, in a dedication by Governor William G. Milliken. ### Since completion Since the freeway was completed in 1973, a few changes have been made to I-75 in Michigan. From 1973 to 1975, I-75 was widened from four to six lanes from south of Flint to north of Bay City. MDOT truncated US 2 to end in St. Ignace by removing it from the I-75 freeway in 1983. In 1986, US 10 was truncated to Bay City, removing its concurrency with I-75 from there to Clarkston. In 1988, the original bascule Zilwaukee Bridge across the Saginaw River was replaced by a much higher structure slightly north of the former bridge. Beginning on February 25, 2008, I-75 closed completely to traffic in both directions from Rosa Parks Boulevard (exit 49) to Clark Street (exit 47) in Detroit. This facilitated the complete rebuilding of the road as part of the Ambassador Gateway Project to better connect I-75 and I-96 to the Ambassador Bridge. Through traffic on I-75 was rerouted along I-94 to I-275 and local detours were posted. The freeway reopened to traffic in June 2009, five months ahead of schedule. The overall project to realign and connect the bridge to the freeways was mired in lawsuits between MDOT and the private company that owns the bridge. The company's owner was jailed for contempt of court during court proceedings in early 2012. MDOT was later ordered to assume responsibility for construction, and the department completed the project on September 21, 2012. All of I-75 within Michigan was named the Tuskegee Airmen Memorial Highway, in honor of the Tuskegee Airmen, at the end of December 2014. In May 2017, MDOT raised the speed limit on I-75 between Bay City and Sault Ste. Marie, excluding the Mackinac Bridge, from 70 to 75 miles per hour (113 to 121 km/h). A segment of I-75 in Oakland County between 12 Mile Road in Madison Heights and South Boulevard in Bloomfield Township had high-occupancy vehicle lanes (HOV lanes) added in both directions. One lane of I-75 in both directions will be restricted to HOV traffic from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. The HOV lanes are part of the I-75 Modernization Project, and they opened to traffic on October 24, 2023. In 2018, MDOT began construction on a new pair of overpasses to connect to the Gordie Howe International Bridge. These would replace the existing slip ramp onto Livernois Avenue. The new ramps are expected to opened by the end of 2025. ## Freeway names I-75 has six named segments in Michigan. The southernmost section from the state line north to the Detroit area is the Detroit–Toledo Expressway. The segment through southern and central Detroit is known as the Fisher Freeway. It was dedicated on September 17, 1970, to the Fisher Brothers, who founded Fisher Body, later a part of General Motors. After the curve in downtown Detroit, I-75 follows the Walter P. Chrysler Freeway northward. That segment is named for Walter P. Chrysler, founder of Chrysler. The name was chosen by the Detroit Common Council on November 6, 1957, and codified in state law in 1990; the state definition for the name places the northern end of the designation at the Oakland–Genesee county line. Officially, the entire length of I-75 in Michigan is the American Legion Memorial Highway. As a practical matter, this name is not used on the southernmost segments of the Interstate. The American Legion was honored with the designation in 1969 in a state law that required private interests to finance the signage. Public Act 174 of 1984 redesignated I-75 in honor of the group and placed responsibility for signage in MDOT's hands. Another name that was applied to all of I-75 was the Michigan Bicentennial Freedom Way. Designated by Senate Concurrent Resolution 216 of 1975, the name only applied to the freeway in 1976. The designation was formally repealed in 2001. Two other segments near the Straits of Mackinac were named in 1976 for figures instrumental in the construction of the Mackinac Bridge. From the Cheboygan–Otsego county line north to the bridge, I-75 was named for G. Mennen Williams, the former governor once called "Michigan's Politician of the Century" in the press. The section in Mackinac County from the northern end of the Mackinac Bridge was named for Prentiss M. Brown, the former Congressman and Senator who served on the MBA board until his death in 1971. ## Monumental bridges Along its route in the state, I-75 utilizes three of Michigan's monumental bridges. The first of them is the Zilwaukee Bridge near Saginaw. The original bridge across the Saginaw River at Zilwaukee was built in 1960 as a bascule bridge to allow shipping traffic to use the river. Opening the drawbridge would back traffic up on I-75/US 10/US 23 for upwards of four hours on holiday weekends. Approved in 1974, construction on the replacement bridge started in October 1979. A major construction accident in August 1982 delayed completion of the new Zilwaukee Bridge; a bridge pier partially collapsed when contractors overloaded a section under construction. The affected 300-foot (91 m) deck segment tilted to rest three feet (0.91 m) higher on one end and five feet (1.5 m) lower on the other. The structure was originally supposed to cost $76.8 million with a 1983 completion date; in the end it cost $131.3 million (equivalent to $ in ) when the southbound span finally opened on September 19, 1988. The structure is the largest concrete segmental bridge in the United States. The second is the Mackinac Bridge that connects Michigan's two peninsulas at the Straits of Mackinac. A structure was first proposed in 1888 by one of the directors of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Car ferry service was started in 1923 to cross the straits, and a bridge authority was first created in 1934 to investigate the possibility of building a permanent connection across the straits. This early authority started with a 1921 proposal for a series of bridges that would have connected Cheboygan to St. Ignace by way of Bois Blanc, Round, and Mackinac islands. The federal Public Works Administration rejected loan and grant requests for that project. A second, direct crossing was then proposed based on designs used for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The collapse of that bridge and World War II delayed any further work on a structure beyond tests of the lake bottom and the construction of the 4,200-foot-long (1,300 m) causeway on the St. Ignace side; the first bridge authority was abolished in 1947. The current agency was created on June 6, 1950. The MBA was authorized in 1952 to sell bonds to finance construction, which were sold on December 17, 1953, to finance the $99.8 million (equivalent to $ in ) cost of the bridge. The structure was designed by David B. Steinman and built by Merritt-Chapman & Scott for the substructure and the American Bridge Company division of U.S. Steel Corporation for the superstructure. Construction started in 1954 and the Mackinac Bridge opened to traffic on November 1, 1957. Final work on the bridge was completed in September 1958. Overall, the structure has a 3,800-foot (1,200 m) central suspension span flanked by two 1,800-foot (550 m) side spans. With the two backstay spans, the Mackinac Bridge is 8,614 feet (2,626 m) long between cable anchorages, the longest in the world at the time it opened. The total length of the structure is 26,444 feet (8,060 m) with two 555-foot-tall (169 m) towers and 155 feet (47 m) of clearance for passing ships under the main span. In 2000, the bridge was named "Michigan's No. 1 Civil Engineering Project of the 20th Century" by the Michigan Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the structure was named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 2010 by the national ASCE. The northernmost of the three monumental bridges along I-75 is the International Bridge, linking the twin cities of Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan and Ontario. The governments on each side of the international border formed a bridge authority to build a highway bridge in 1935. Construction started on the structure September 16, 1960. The International Bridge is nearly three miles (4.8 km) long, encompassing spans over the American and Canadian navigation channels for the Soo Locks and the St. Marys River. The American approach is 2,471 feet (753 m), and the Canadian approach is 2,942 feet (897 m). The center span over the river is 9,280 feet (2,830 m), flanked by 1,260-foot (380 m) and 830-foot (250 m) spans over the American and Canadian shipping channels, respectively. The bridge was designed by the same firm that handled the Mackinac Bridge for a cost of $20 million (equivalent to $ in ). It opened to traffic on October 31, 1962. ## Exit list |} ## Related trunklines There are four auxiliary Interstate Highways for I-75 in Michigan. I-275 begins as a loop from northern Monroe County and continues to connect with I-96 and I-696. The freeway serves the population of western Wayne County and Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. The highway was originally intended to connect with I-75 north of Pontiac. I-375 was the shortest signed Interstate in the nation; it serves the immediate downtown Detroit area. I-475 is known as the UAW Freeway and the David Dunbar Buick Freeway. This freeway serves Flint's downtown areas as I-75 goes to the west side of the city. The fourth auxiliary Interstate is I-675, a loop into the city of Saginaw that served as an alternate to I-75 when the drawbridge over the Saginaw River was still operating. In addition to the auxiliary Interstates, there are eight current business routes related to the freeway in the state. These business loops and spurs provide signed connections into the downtowns of Pontiac, Bay City, West Branch, Roscommon, Grayling, Gaylord, St. Ignace, and Sault Ste. Marie. A ninth highway was previously designated in Saginaw as well. A 10th business route has been proposed for Indian River. ## See also -

Cyathus

Genus of fungi in the Nidulariaceae

Cyathus is a genus of fungi in the Nidulariaceae, which is a family collectively known as the bird's nest fungi. They are given this name as they resemble tiny bird's nests filled with "eggs" – structures large enough to have been mistaken in the past for seeds. However, these are now known to be reproductive structures containing spores. The "eggs", or peridioles, are firmly attached to the inner surface of this fruit body by an elastic cord of mycelia known as a funiculus. The 45 species are widely distributed throughout the world and some are found in most countries, although a few exist in only one or two locales. Cyathus stercoreus is considered endangered in a number of European countries. Some species of Cyathus are also known as splash cups, which refers to the fact that falling raindrops can knock the peridioles out of the open-cup fruit body. The internal and external surfaces of this cup may be ridged longitudinally (referred to as plicate or striate); this is one example of a taxonomic characteristic that has traditionally served to distinguish between species. Generally considered inedible, Cyathus species are saprobic, since they obtain nutrients from decomposing organic matter. They usually grow on decaying wood or woody debris, on cow and horse dung, or directly on humus-rich soil. The life cycle of this genus allows it to reproduce both sexually, with meiosis, and asexually via spores. Several Cyathus species produce bioactive compounds, some with medicinal properties, and several lignin-degrading enzymes from the genus may be useful in bioremediation and agriculture. Phylogenetic analysis is providing new insights into the evolutionary relationships between the various species in Cyathus, and has cast doubt on the validity of the older classification systems that are based on traditional taxonomic characteristics. ## Taxonomy ### History Bird's nest fungi were first mentioned by Flemish botanist Carolus Clusius in Rariorum plantarum historia (1601). Over the next couple of centuries, these fungi were the subject of some controversy regarding whether the peridioles were seeds, and the mechanism by which they were dispersed in nature. For example, the French botanist Jean-Jacques Paulet, in his work Traité des champignons (1790–1793), proposed the erroneous notion that peridioles were ejected from the fruit bodies by some sort of spring mechanism. The genus was established in 1768 by the Swiss scientist Albrecht von Haller; the generic name Cyathus is Latin, but it was originally derived from the Ancient Greek word κύαθος, meaning 'cup'. The structure and biology of the genus Cyathus was better known by the mid-19th century, starting with the appearance in 1842 of a paper by Carl Johann Friedrich Schmitz, and two years later, a monograph by the brothers Louis René and Charles Tulasne. The work of the Tulasnes was thorough and accurate, and was highly regarded by later researchers. Subsequently, monographs were written in 1902 by Violet S. White (on American species), Curtis Gates Lloyd in 1906, Gordon Herriot Cunningham in 1924 (on New Zealand species), and Harold J. Brodie in 1975. #### Infrageneric classification The genus Cyathus was first subdivided into two infrageneric groups (i.e., grouping species below the rank of genus) by the Tulasne brothers; the "eucyathus" group had fruit bodies with inner surfaces folded into pleats (plications), while the "olla" group lacked plications. Later (1906), Lloyd published a different concept of infrageneric grouping in Cyathus, describing five groups, two in the eucyathus group and five in the olla group. In the 1970s, Brodie, in his monograph on bird's nest fungi, separated the genus Cyathus into seven related groups based on a number of taxonomic characteristics, including the presence or absence of plications, the structure of the peridioles, the color of the fruit bodies, and the nature of the hairs on the outer peridium: - Olla group: Species with a tomentum having fine flattened-down hairs, and no plications. - C. olla, C. africanus, C. badius, C. canna, C. colensoi, C. confusus, C. earlei, C. hookeri, C. microsporus, C. minimus, C. pygmaeus - Pallidus group: Species with conspicuous, long, downward-pointing hairs, and a smooth (non-plicate) inner peridium. - C. pallidus, C. julietae - Triplex group: Species with mostly dark-colored peridia, and a silvery white inner surface. - C. triplex, C. setosus, C. sinensis - Gracilis group: Species with tomentum hairs clumped into tufts or mounds. - C. gracilis, C. intermedius, C. crassimurus, C. elmeri - Stercoreus group: Species with non-plicate peridia, shaggy or wooly outer peridium walls, and dark to black peridioles. - C. stercoreus, C. pictus, C. fimicola - Poeppigii group: Species with plicate internal peridial walls, hairy to shaggy outer walls, dark to black peridioles, and large, roughly spherical or ellipsoidal spores. - C. poeppigii, C. crispus, C. limbatus, C. gayanus, C. costatus, C. cheliensis, C. olivaceo-brunneus - Striatus group: Species with plicate internal peridia, hairy to shaggy outer peridia, and mostly elliptical spores. - C. striatus, C. annulatus, C. berkeleyanus, C. bulleri, C. chevalieri, C. ellipsoideus, C. helenae, C. montagnei, C. nigro-albus, C. novae-zeelandiae, C. pullus, C. rudis ### Phylogeny The 2007 publication of phylogenetic analyses of DNA sequence data of numerous Cyathus species has cast doubt on the validity of the morphology-based infrageneric classifications described by Brodie. This research suggests that Cyathus species can be grouped into three genetically related clades: - Ollum group: - C. africanus (type), C. africanus f. latisporus, C. conlensoi, C. griseocarpus, C. guandishanensis, C. hookeri, C. jiayuguanensis, C. olla, C. olla f. anglicus, and C. olla f. brodiensis. - Striatum group: - C. annulatus, C. crassimurus, C. helenae, C. poeppigii, C. renwei, C. setosus, C. stercoreus, and C. triplex. - Pallidum group: - C. berkeleyanus, C. olla f. lanatus, C. gansuensis, and C. pallidus. This analysis shows that rather than fruit body structure, spore size is generally a more reliable character for segregating species groups in Cyathus. For example, species in the ollum clade all have spore lengths less than 15 μm, while all members of the pallidum group have lengths greater than 15 μm; the striatum group, however, cannot be distinguished from the pallidum group by spore size alone. Two characteristics are most suited for distinguishing members of the ollum group from the pallidum group: the thickness of the hair layer on the peridium surface, and the outline of the fruit bodies. The tomentum of Pallidum species is thick, like felt, and typically aggregates into clumps of shaggy or woolly hair. Their crucible-shaped fruit bodies do not have a clearly differentiated stipe. The exoperidium of Ollum species, in comparison, has a thin tomentum of fine hairs; fruit bodies are funnel-shaped and have either a constricted base or a distinct stipe. ## Description Species in the genus Cyathus have fruit bodies (peridia) that are vase-, trumpet- or urn-shaped with dimensions of 4–8 millimetres (3⁄16–5⁄16 inch) wide by 7–18 mm (1⁄4–11⁄16 in) tall. Fruit bodies are brown to gray-brown in color, and covered with small hair-like structures on the outer surface. Some species, like C. striatus and C. setosus, have conspicuous bristles called setae on the rim of the cup. The fruit body is often expanded at the base into a solid rounded mass of hyphae called an emplacement, which typically becomes tangled and entwined with small fragments of the underlying growing surface, improving its stability and helping it from being knocked over by rain. Immature fruit bodies have a whitish membrane, an epiphragm, that covers the peridium opening when young, but eventually dehisces, breaking open during maturation. Viewed with a microscope, the peridium of Cyathus species is made of three distinct layers—the endo-, meso-, and ectoperidium, referring to the inner, middle, and outer layers respectively. While the surface of the ectoperidium in Cyathus is usually hairy, the endoperidial surface is smooth, and depending on the species, may have longitudinal grooves (striations). Because the basic fruit body structure in all genera of the family Nidulariaceae is essentially similar, Cyathus may be readily confused with species of Nidula or Crucibulum, especially older, weathered specimens of Cyathus that may have the hairy ectoperidium worn off. It distinguished from Nidula by the presence of a funiculus, a cord of hyphae attaching the peridiole to the endoperidium. Cyathus differs from genus Crucibulum by having a distinct three-layered wall and a more intricate funiculus. ### Peridiole structure Derived from the Greek word peridion, meaning "small leather pouch", the peridiole is the "egg" of the bird's nest. It is a mass of basidiospores and glebal tissue enclosed by a hard and waxy outer shell. The shape may be described as lenticular—like a biconvex lens—and depending on the species, may range in color from whitish to grayish to black. The interior chamber of the peridiole contains a hymenium that is made of basidia, sterile (non-reproductive) structures, and spores. In young, freshly opened fruit bodies, the peridioles lie in a clear gelatinous substance which soon dries. Peridioles are attached to the fruit body by a funiculus, a complex structure of hyphae that may be differentiated into three regions: the basal piece, which attaches it to the inner wall of the peridium, the middle piece, and an upper sheath, called the purse, connected to the lower surface of the peridiole. In the purse and middle piece is a coiled thread of interwoven hyphae called the funicular cord, attached at one end to the peridiole and at the other end to an entangled mass of hyphae called the hapteron. In some species the peridioles may be covered by a tunica, a thin white membrane (particularly evident in C. striatus and C. crassimurus). Spores typically have an elliptical or roughly spherical shape, and are thick-walled, hyaline or light yellow-brown in color, with dimensions of 5–15 by 5–8 μm. ### Life cycle The life cycle of the genus Cyathus, which contains both haploid and diploid stages, is typical of taxa in the basidiomycetes that can reproduce both asexually (via vegetative spores), or sexually (with meiosis). Like other wood-decay fungi, this life cycle may be considered as two functionally different phases: the vegetative stage for the spread of mycelia, and the reproductive stage for the establishment of spore-producing structures, the fruit bodies. The vegetative stage encompasses those phases of the life cycle involved with the germination, spread, and survival of the mycelium. Spores germinate under suitable conditions of moisture and temperature, and grow into branching filaments called hyphae, pushing out like roots into the rotting wood. These hyphae are homokaryotic, containing a single nucleus in each compartment; they increase in length by adding cell-wall material to a growing tip. As these tips expand and spread to produce new growing points, a network called the mycelium develops. Mycelial growth occurs by mitosis and the synthesis of hyphal biomass. When two homokaryotic hyphae of different mating compatibility groups fuse with one another, they form a dikaryotic mycelia in a process called plasmogamy. Prerequisites for mycelial survival and colonization a substrate (like rotting wood) include suitable humidity and nutrient availability. The majority of Cyathus species are saprobic, so mycelial growth in rotting wood is made possible by the secretion of enzymes that break down complex polysaccharides (such as cellulose and lignin) into simple sugars that can be used as nutrients. After a period of time and under the appropriate environmental conditions, the dikaryotic mycelia may enter the reproductive stage of the life cycle. Fruit body formation is influenced by external factors such as season (which affects temperature and air humidity), nutrients and light. As fruit bodies develop they produce peridioles containing the basidia upon which new basidiospores are made. Young basidia contain a pair of haploid sexually compatible nuclei which fuse, and the resulting diploid fusion nucleus undergoes meiosis to produce basidiospores, each containing a single haploid nucleus. The dikaryotic mycelia from which the fruit bodies are produced is long lasting, and will continue to produce successive generations of fruit bodies as long as the environmental conditions are favorable. The development of Cyathus fruit bodies has been studied in laboratory culture; C. stercoreus has been used most often for these studies due to the ease with which it may be grown experimentally. In 1958, E. Garnett first demonstrated that the development and form of the fruit bodies is at least partially dependent on the intensity of light it receives during development. For example, exposure of the heterokaryotic mycelium to light is required for fruit to occur, and furthermore, this light needs to be at a wavelength of less than 530 nm. Continuous light is not required for fruit body development; after the mycelium has reached a certain stage of maturity, only a brief exposure to light is necessary, and fruit bodies will form if even subsequently kept in the dark. Lu suggested in 1965 that certain growing conditions—such as a shortage in available nutrients—shifts the fungus' metabolism to produce a hypothetical "photoreceptive precursor" that enables the growth of the fruit bodies to be stimulated and affected by light. The fungi is also positively phototropic, that is, it will orient its fruit bodies in the direction of the light source. The time required to develop fruit bodies depends on a number of factors, such as the temperature, or the availability and type of nutrients, but in general "most species that do fruit in laboratory culture do so best at about 25 °C, in from 18 to 40 days." ### Bioactive compounds A number of species of Cyathus produce metabolites with biological activity, and novel chemical structures that are specific to this genus. For example, cyathins are diterpenoid compounds produced by C. helenae, C. africanus and C. earlei. Several of the cyathins (especially cyathins B₃ and C₃), including striatin compounds from C. striatus, show strong antibiotic activity. Cyathane diterpenoids also stimulate nerve growth factor synthesis, and have the potential to be developed into therapeutic agents for neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. Compounds named cyathuscavins, isolated from the mycelial liquid culture of C. stercoreus, have significant antioxidant activity, as do the compounds known as cyathusals, also from C. stercoreus. Various sesquiterpene compounds have also been identified in C. bulleri, including cybrodol (derived from humulene), nidulol, and bullerone. ## Distribution and habitat Fruit bodies typically grow in clusters, and are found on dead or decaying wood, or on woody fragments in cow or horse dung. Dung-loving (coprophilous) species include C. stercoreus, C. costatus, C. fimicola, and C. pygmaeus. Some species have been collected on woody material like dead herbaceous stems, the empty shells or husks of nuts, or on fibrous material like coconut, jute, or hemp fiber woven into matting, sacks or cloth. In nature, fruit bodies are usually found in moist, partly shaded sites, such as the edges of woods on trails, or around lighted openings in forests. They are less frequently found growing in dense vegetation and deep mosses, as these environments would interfere with the dispersal of peridioles by falling drops of water. The appearance of fruit bodies is largely dependent upon features of the immediate growing environment; specifically, optimum conditions of temperature, moisture, and nutrient availability are more important factors for fruit rather than the broad geographical area in which the fungi are located, or the season. Examples of the ability of Cyathus to thrive in somewhat inhospitable environments are provided by C. striatus and C. stercoreus, which can survive the drought and cold of winter in temperate North America, and the species C. helenae, which has been found growing on dead alpine plants at an altitude of 2,100 metres (7,000 ft). In general, species of Cyathus have a worldwide distribution, but are only rarely found in the arctic and subarctic. One of the best known species, C. striatus has a circumpolar distribution and is commonly found throughout temperate locations, while the morphologically similar C. poeppigii is widely spread in tropical areas, rarely in the subtropics, and never in temperate regions. The majority of species are native to warm climates. For example, although 20 different species have been reported from the United States and Canada, only 8 are commonly encountered; on the other hand, 25 species may be regularly found in the West Indies, and the Hawaiian Islands alone have 11 species. Some species seem to be endemic to certain regions, such as C. novae-zeelandiae found in New Zealand, or C. crassimurus, found only in Hawaii; however, this apparent endemism may just be a result of a lack of collections, rather than a difference in the habitat that constitutes a barrier to spread. Although widespread in the tropics and most of the temperate world, C. stercoreus is only rarely found in Europe; this has resulted in its appearance on a number of Red Lists. For example, it is considered endangered in Bulgaria, Denmark, and Montenegro, and "near threatened" in Great Britain. The discovery of a Cyathus species in Dominican amber (C. dominicanus) suggests that the basic form of the bird's nest fungi had already evolved by the Cretaceous era and that the group had diversified by the mid-Cenozoic. ## Ecology ### Spore dispersal Like other bird's nest fungi in the Nidulariaceae, species of Cyathus have their spores dispersed when water falls into the fruit body. The fruit body is shaped so that the kinetic energy of a fallen raindrop is redirected upward and slightly outward by the angle of the cup wall, which is consistently 70–75° with the horizontal. The action ejects the peridioles out of the so-called "splash cup", where it may break and spread the spores within, or be eaten and dispersed by animals after passing through the digestive tract. This method of spore dispersal in the Nidulariaceae was tested experimentally by George Willard Martin in 1924, and later elaborated by Arthur Henry Reginald Buller, who used C. striatus as the model species to experimentally investigate the phenomenon. Buller's major conclusions about spore dispersal were later summarized by his graduate student Harold J. Brodie, with whom he conducted several of these splash cup experiments: > Raindrops cause the peridioles of the Nidulariaceae to be thrown about four feet by splash action. In the genus Cyathus, as a peridiole is jerked out of its cup, the funiculus is torn and this makes possible the expansion of a mass of adhesive hyphae (the hapteron) which clings to any object in the line of flight. The momentum of the peridiole causes a long cord to be pulled out of a sheath attached to the peridiole. The peridiole is checked in flight and the jerk causes the funicular cord to become wound around stems or entangled among plant hairs. Thus the peridiole becomes attached to vegetation and may be eaten subsequently by herbivorous animals. Although it has not been shown experimentally if the spores can survive the passage through an animal's digestive tract, the regular presence of Cyathus on cow or horse manure strongly suggest that this is true. Alternatively, the hard outer casing of peridioles ejected from splash cups may simply disintegrate over time, eventually releasing the spores within. ## Uses Species in the family Nidulariaceae, including Cyathus, are considered inedible, as (in Brodie's words) they are "not sufficiently large, fleshy, or odorous to be of interest to humans as food". However, there have not been reports of poisonous alkaloids or other substances considered toxic to humans. Brodie goes on to note that two Cyathus species have been used by native peoples as an aphrodisiac, or to stimulate fertility: C. limbatus in Colombia, and C. microsporus in Guadeloupe. Whether these species have any actual effect on human physiology is unknown. ### Biodegradation Lignin is a complex polymeric chemical compound that is a major constituent of wood. Resistant to biological decomposition, its presence in paper makes it weaker and more liable to discolor when exposed to light. The species C. bulleri contains three lignin-degrading enzymes: lignin peroxidase, manganese peroxidase, and laccase. These enzymes have potential applications not only in the pulp and paper industry, but also to increase the digestibility and protein content of forage for cattle. Because laccases can break down phenolic compounds they may be used to detoxify some environmental pollutants, such as dyes used in the textile industry. C. bulleri laccase has also been genetically engineered to be produced by Escherichia coli, making it the first fungal laccase to be produced in a bacterial host. C. pallidus can biodegrade the explosive compound RDX (hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine), suggesting it might be used to decontaminate munitions-contaminated soils. ### Agriculture Cyathus olla has been investigated for its ability to accelerate the decomposition of stubble left in the field after harvest, effectively reducing pathogen populations and accelerating nutrient cycling through mineralization of essential plant nutrients. ### Human biology Various Cyathus species have antifungal activity against human pathogens such as Aspergillus fumigatus, Candida albicans and Cryptococcus neoformans. Extracts of C. striatus have inhibitory effects on NF-κB, a transcription factor responsible for regulating the expression of several genes involved in the immune system, inflammation, and cell death. ## Cited texts - - -

2008 Brazilian Grand Prix

Formula One motor race

The 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix (formally the Formula 1 Grande Prêmio do Brasil 2008) was a Formula One motor race held on 2 November 2008 at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace, Interlagos, in São Paulo, Brazil. It was the eighteenth and final race of the 2008 Formula One World Championship. Ferrari driver Felipe Massa won the 71-lap race from pole position; this was the last of Massa's 11 Grand Prix wins. Fernando Alonso finished second in a Renault, and Massa's teammate Kimi Räikkönen finished third. Massa started the race alongside Toyota driver Jarno Trulli. Massa's teammate Räikkönen began from third next to McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton. Rain fell minutes before the race, delaying the start, and as the track dried Massa established a lead of several seconds. More rain late in the race made the last few laps treacherous for the drivers, but could not prevent Massa from winning the Grand Prix. Sebastian Vettel of Toro Rosso finished in fourth place behind Alonso and Räikkönen. Hamilton passed Toyota's Timo Glock in the final corners of the race to finish fifth, securing him the points needed to take the Drivers' Championship. Hamilton received praise from many in the Formula One community, including former champions Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher. The McLaren driver also received official congratulations from Queen Elizabeth II and British prime minister Gordon Brown. Massa's win and Räikkönen's third place helped Ferrari win the Constructors' Championship. The Grand Prix was 13-time Grand Prix winner David Coulthard's final race; the Scot retired after 246 race starts. ## Background The 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix was the 18th and final round of the 2008 Formula One World Championship and was held on 2 November 2008, at the 4.309 km (2.677 mi) Autódromo José Carlos Pace, in São Paulo, Brazil. Heading into the final race of the season, McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton was leading the Drivers' Championship with 94 points; Ferrari driver Felipe Massa was second with 87 points, seven points behind Hamilton. A maximum of ten points were available for the final race, which meant that Massa could still win the title if Hamilton finished in sixth place or lower. Otherwise, Hamilton would be champion. In the event of a points tie, Massa would win the championship on a count-back, having more wins. Behind Hamilton and Massa in the Drivers' Championship, Robert Kubica was third with 75 points in a BMW, and Massa's Ferrari teammate Kimi Räikkönen was fourth with 69 points. In the Constructors' Championship, Ferrari were leading with 156 points and McLaren–Mercedes were second with 145 points, 11 points behind, with a maximum of 18 points available. If the two Ferrari drivers finished in the top six, the team would secure the Constructors' Championship, even if the McLaren drivers were to finish as the top two. Prior to this race, Hamilton was criticised by many pundits for not maintaining his composure at the . The Times columnist Edward Gorman said that Hamilton should win the championship, but commented: > Alternatively Hamilton may suffer another one of his rushes of blood to the head and do something utterly unnecessary at Interlagos, just as he did in Japan eight days ago and in Brazil last year, and throw it all away ... Suddenly defending even a seven-point lead sounds a tall order. Former Formula One team owner Eddie Jordan created controversy when he said that "if Massa tries to take him out as he did in Japan in order to steal the title then Lewis has to be ready for it", adding: "If he tries that on then Lewis has to turn his wheel into Massa to ensure he does not finish the race either – he has to take his wheel off." Both Hamilton and Massa rejected the comments, with Massa saying: "Playing dirty has never been part of my game. I don't want anything to do with it. The only thing on my mind is winning the race." The weekend marked David Coulthard's final race. Coulthard's Red Bull RB4 was decorated in the colours of "Wings for Life", a charity dedicated to raising awareness of spinal cord injuries. Coulthard said: "I'm dedicating my last race to the vision of making paraplegia curable." Red Bull Racing received approval from the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, Formula One's governing body, to run Coulthard's car in different colours than his teammate Mark Webber. This was the last Formula One race broadcast by ITV in the United Kingdom and Telecinco in Spain; the rights went to the BBC and La Sexta, respectively, for 2009. It was also the last race for the Honda team before they withdrew from Formula One due to the global economic crisis. ## Practice Three practice sessions were held before the race; the first on Friday morning and the second on Friday afternoon. Both sessions lasted 90 minutes. The third session was held on Saturday morning and lasted an hour. The two sessions on Friday were affected by occasionally damp conditions, which made the track moderately slippery. Massa was quickest with a time of 1:12.305 in the first session, less than two-tenths of a second faster than Hamilton. Räikkönen was just off Hamilton's pace, followed by Kubica, Heikki Kovalainen, and Fernando Alonso. Webber was seventh, still within a second of Massa's time. In the second practice session, Alonso was fastest with a time of 1:12.296, less than six-hundredths of a second quicker than second-placed Massa. Jarno Trulli took third place, ahead of Räikkönen, Webber and Sebastian Vettel. Hamilton only managed ninth place, locking his McLaren's wheels and struggling for grip. Kovalainen was only quick enough for fifteenth position. The Saturday morning session was held on a much warmer track, which reached temperatures as high as 36 °C (97 °F). Alonso was again quickest, posting a time of 1:12.141, narrowly faster than both McLaren drivers. Massa, Vettel, and Nick Heidfeld rounded out the top six positions. Räikkönen only managed twelfth, failing to improve on his times set early in the session. ## Qualifying The qualifying session on Saturday afternoon was split into three parts. The first part ran for 20 minutes and eliminated the cars from qualifying that finished the session 16th or lower. The second part of qualifying lasted 15 minutes and eliminated cars that finished in positions 11 to 15. The final part of qualifying determined the positions from first to tenth, and decided pole position. Cars which competed in the final session of qualifying were not allowed to refuel before the race, and therefore carried more fuel than in the previous sessions. Massa clinched his sixth pole position for the season, and his third consecutive pole at Interlagos, with a time of 1:12.368. He was joined on the front row of the grid by Trulli, in his best qualifying performance of the season. Räikkönen qualified third, though he was happy with beginning the race on the racing line behind his teammate. Hamilton qualified fourth, half a second behind Massa, having battled both Ferrari drivers for time during the first two qualifying sessions. Hamilton's slow pace in the final qualifying session compared to the first two suggested he was carrying more fuel than his title challengers. Hamilton's teammate Kovalainen qualified fifth. Alonso, Vettel, Heidfeld, Sébastien Bourdais and Timo Glock rounded out the top ten. Kubica only managed 13th, having struggled with overall grip for much of the day. Coulthard, in his final Formula One race, qualified 14th; Rubens Barrichello, in 15th, was quicker than Honda teammate Jenson Button in 17th. The Williams and Force India drivers qualified at the back of the grid, covering positions 16 to 20 with Button. ### Qualifying classification ## Race The conditions on the grid were damp before the race, the air temperature at 28 °C (82 °F); rain or thunderstorms were expected. The Grand Prix, which had a race day attendance of 149,600, was due to begin at 15:00 local time (UTC-2), but was delayed by ten minutes when heavy rain hit the track at 14:56. Every team but one changed the tyres on both their cars from dry-weather tyres to intermediate tyres. Kubica's car was the exception, remaining on the dry set-up. Following the formation lap, Kubica returned to the pit lane, his team changing the car's tyres to intermediates. This meant the driver would start the race from the pit-lane. Massa retained his pole position lead into the first corner, followed by Trulli, Räikkönen, Hamilton and Kovalainen. Coulthard was hit from behind by Nico Rosberg into turn two, spinning him around. The Red Bull car then collided with Rosberg's Williams teammate Kazuki Nakajima. This damaged the suspension and forced Coulthard to retire in his final race. Piquet spun off at the next corner, his car hitting the barriers. Kovalainen was passed by Alonso and Vettel mid-lap, dropping him to seventh. The accidents of Coulthard and Piquet prompted the deployment of the safety car at the end of the first lap. The track conditions began to dry early on; Force India's Giancarlo Fisichella was the first driver to stop for dry-weather tyres, pitting at the end of lap two. He remained in 18th position. Racing resumed on lap five when the safety car pulled into the pit-lane. Rosberg and Button both made pit stops on lap seven, each changing to dry-weather tyres. Bourdais, Glock, Adrian Sutil and Nakajima followed a lap later. By lap 11, the rest of the field had changed to dry-weather tyres. Fisichella benefited from pitting the earliest for dry tyres, moving up the order to a high of fifth position. Nakajima spun on lap 13, losing five seconds on the lap. On lap 15, Massa set a new fastest lap of 1:16.888, and extended his lead over Vettel. Hamilton remained behind Fisichella, and though his McLaren car appeared quicker, he was unable to pass the Force India driver until lap 18. Glock passed Fisichella two laps later. Trulli and Bourdais collided on lap 20 into turn one, sending the Toro Rosso driver across the grass. Bourdais lost six places and rejoined in 13th place. Trulli's Toyota teammate, Timo Glock, passed Fisichella later on in the same lap for sixth. Massa and Sebastian Vettel traded fastest lap times; Vettel's 1:14.214 on lap 25 was surpassed by Massa's 1:14.161 a lap later. However, Vettel made a pit stop soon after, having been lighter-fuelled than his Ferrari opponent. He rejoined in sixth position, behind Glock. Kovalainen passed Trulli and Fisichella in separate manoeuvres, gaining seventh position. On lap 36 Massa set the fastest lap of the race, a 1:13.736. Timo Glock was fuelled so he could complete the race without stopping again at his pit stop on lap 36. Massa was the first of the championship frontrunners to pit, on lap 38; Alonso and Hamilton made pit stops two laps after. When Räikkönen made a pit stop on lap 43, Massa had regained the lead, ahead of Alonso. Räikkönen rejoined ahead of Hamilton in third place. Fisichella's stop was marred by transmission problems, dropping him to 18th position when he resumed. Vettel made a pit stop again on lap 51, his team fuelling him to the finish. He rejoined in fifth. By lap 54, Massa had extended his already comfortable lead over Alonso to 9.6 seconds. Vettel was closing in quickly on Hamilton, the McLaren driver needing to finish no lower than fifth to win the championship. Light rain began to fall on lap 63. Heidfeld made a pit stop and his BMW pit crew changed his tyres to intermediates, echoing their strategy at the which had granted the German a podium position. Kovalainen made a pit stop on lap 65; Alonso and Räikkönen made a pit stop a lap later. Hamilton and Vettel halted their battle for fourth position when they came into the pit lane to change onto intermediate tyres on lap 66. Glock chose to remain on his dry-weather tyres and rose from seventh to fourth place as those ahead of him made pit stops. Massa made a pit stop on lap 67, meaning that all of the frontrunners, with the exception of Glock, were now on intermediate tyres. The rain began to fall heavily on lap 69 and Hamilton ran wide, which allowed Vettel to take fifth position. As Massa crossed the finish line to win the race, Hamilton battled Vettel for the crucial point needed to win the championship. Hamilton did not know of his position upon beginning the final lap and was told over the radio to overtake Glock during the fifth-place battle. Vettel and Hamilton passed Glock in the final corners, the Toyota driver struggling for grip as his dry-weather tyres slid on the wet track. Premature joy in the Ferrari garage soon turned to disappointment as Hamilton finished the race in fifth position, clinching the championship by a single point and becoming Formula One's youngest championship winner until Vettel in 2010. Räikkönen's third-place finish behind Alonso secured Ferrari the constructors' title. After the race, Button's car caught fire in the pit lane. ### Post-race The top three finishers appeared on the podium and in the subsequent press conference. Massa said that he had "almost done everything perfectly", and expressed his disappointment that despite winning the race he had not won the championship. He gave his congratulations to Hamilton for his title win, commenting: > We need to congratulate Lewis because he did a great championship and he scored more points than us, so he deserves to be champion. I know how to lose and I know how to win and as I said before it is another day of my life from which I am going to learn a lot. Massa's Ferrari teammate Kimi Räikkönen expressed disappointment in the outcome of the Drivers' Championship, but acknowledged the support of his team, saying "we won at least the team championship". Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo was reportedly so angry with the result, however, that he destroyed the television he was viewing the race on. McLaren boss Ron Dennis praised Hamilton, saying: "He just keeps delivering and, at the end of the day, he's just two years into his career. So there's a long way to go." Hamilton received official congratulations from Queen Elizabeth II, following similar plaudits from the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown and the Leader of the Opposition David Cameron. Former Formula One champions also congratulated Hamilton. 1996 champion Damon Hill called the McLaren driver "one of the greatest drivers we have had in this country", and multiple champion Michael Schumacher praised both Hamilton and Massa, saying the Ferrari driver's performance indicated his winning abilities. Massa was praised for his sportsmanship after the race, with Joe Saward of GrandPrix.com commenting: "He took defeat with a grace and a style that one rarely sees in modern sport." Eddie Jordan said that Hamilton "didn't really give himself the best chance of winning the championship – and was very lucky". The former team boss called McLaren's strategy "a disaster". GrandPrix.com expressed disbelief in the outcome: "It was a showdown so improbable that even Hollywood would not have made a film of it. The scriptwriters would have been laughed out of the studios." Autosport magazine writer Adam Cooper called the race "epic". After considering other Formula One title finales, Cooper concluded "nothing has ever matched what we saw [in Brazil]". Timo Glock remained certain the decision to stay on dry-weather tyres, when other teams were pitting for wet-weather tyres, was a correct one: "We were running seventh before the rain came and we would have probably finished there if it had been totally dry. Instead we finished sixth so that shows the strategy was the right one." Glock added that the conditions were so poor "I didn't even know that Lewis had overtaken me until after the race". His family would receive hate mail from fans and he was particularly heavily criticised by Italian journalists who held the perception that he assisted in helping Hamilton win the championship. Kubica's finish in 11th position meant that he lost third place in the championship to Räikkönen (on win countback due to Räikkönen having scored two wins during the season to Kubica's one). After the race, Kubica said: "We made too many mistakes during the weekend and this is the result." His team said that they had received the wrong information about track conditions at the start of the race, which led them to keep the Polish driver's car on dry-weather tyres when the rest of the field had changed to intermediates. David Coulthard expressed his disappointment in his early exit from his final Formula One race, saying: "I'm pretty gutted, it's not how I wanted to end my career." The Scottish driver said that he had planned to perform doughnuts for the crowd, a celebration discouraged in Formula One at the time. Coulthard left Formula One after 15 years with 246 race starts and 13 wins. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said: "It's a great shame for David to be eliminated from his last Grand Prix at the first corner, but he can look back on a long and illustrious career where he's achieved a great deal." Coulthard continued to work for Red Bull Racing in 2009 as a testing and development consultant. ### Race classification - Notes: - – Robert Kubica started the race from the pitlane. ## Final Championship standings - Drivers' Championship standings - Constructors' Championship standings - Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings. - Bold text and an asterisk indicates the World Champions.

Blackburn Olympic F.C.

Association football club in England

Blackburn Olympic Football Club was an English football club based in Blackburn, Lancashire in the late 19th century. Although the club was only in existence for just over a decade, it is significant in the history of football in England as the first club from the north of the country and the first from a working-class background to win the country's leading competition, the Football Association Challenge Cup (FA Cup). The cup had previously been won only by teams of wealthy amateurs from the Home counties, and Olympic's victory marked a turning point in the sport's transition from a pastime for upper-class gentlemen to a professional sport. The club was formed in 1878 and initially took part only in minor local competitions. In 1880, the club entered the FA Cup for the first time, and three years later defeated Old Etonians at Kennington Oval to win the trophy. Olympic, however, proved unable to compete with wealthier and better-supported clubs in the new professional era, and folded in 1889. Most of Olympic's home matches took place at the Hole-i'-th'-Wall stadium, named after an adjacent public house. From 1880 onwards, the club's first-choice colours consisted of light blue shirts and white shorts. One Olympic player, James Ward, was selected for the England team and six other former or future England internationals played for the club, including Jack Hunter, who was the club's coach at the time of Olympic's FA Cup win. ## History ### Formation and early years Association football was first codified in the 1860s in the south of England and played by teams of upper-class former public school pupils and Oxbridge graduates. However, the game spread to the industrial towns of the north by the following decade. The town of Blackburn in Lancashire had more than a dozen active football clubs by 1877, with Blackburn Rovers, founded in 1875, generally viewed as the leading team. Blackburn Olympic F.C. was founded in February 1878 when two of these clubs, Black Star and James Street, opted to merge. The name was chosen by James Edmondson, the club's first treasurer, and is believed to have been inspired by the recent excavation of Olympia, site of the ancient Olympic Games. The new club's first match was a friendly played on 9 February 1878 which resulted in a 2–0 win over local team St. John's. In April 1878, the club entered its first competition, the Livesey United Cup. Olympic beat St. Mark's in the final to win the tournament, and, as the competition was not held again, the club retained the trophy in perpetuity. Over the next two seasons the club continued to play friendly matches and also entered the Blackburn Association Challenge Cup, a knock-out tournament open to all local clubs set up by the organisation which governed football within the town. Olympic won the cup in both 1879 and 1880, after which the competition was discontinued when the Blackburn Association was absorbed into the larger Lancashire County Football Association. As with the Livesey United Cup, the trophy remained in Olympic's possession for the remainder of the club's existence. In 1880 the club's committee decided that Olympic should compete for greater prizes, and opted to enter two further competitions, the Lancashire Senior Cup and the Football Association Challenge Cup (FA Cup), the country's premier football competition. In the club's first FA Cup match, the "Light Blues" were defeated 5–4 by Sheffield, and the following season the team again lost in the first round, away to Darwen. The club's reputation within its home area was growing, however, and matches were now being arranged with teams from further afield, such as Sheffield Wednesday, Nottingham Forest, and even Scottish clubs such as Cowlairs and Hibernian. The club's increasing expenses were met with the help of Sydney Yates, a local iron foundry owner, who invested a large amount of money and continued to bankroll the club for most of its existence. At the end of the 1881–82 season, Olympic defeated Blackburn Rovers to win the East Lancashire Charity Cup. ### Success In the 1882–83 FA Cup, Olympic defeated four other Lancashire clubs, Accrington, Lower Darwen, Darwen Ramblers, and Church, to reach the fifth round. At this stage the "Light Blues" were drawn to play Welsh team Druids. Olympic defeated the Ruabon-based team 4–1 to progress to the semi-final stage, where for the first time they faced opponents from the south of England — Old Carthusians. The Carthusians, the team for former pupils of Charterhouse School, had won the cup two years earlier and even the local newspapers in Blackburn considered them strong favourites to reach the final again. Olympic, however, won 4–0 in a match played at a neutral venue in Whalley Range, Manchester, to set up a match with another of the great amateur teams, Old Etonians, in the final at Kennington Oval. The Etonians had defeated Olympic's close rivals Blackburn Rovers in the final a year earlier, the first time a northern team had reached the final. Before the final, former England player Jack Hunter, who had joined the club in 1882 in the twin roles of player and coach, arranged to take the team to Blackpool for several days' special training. Such an undertaking had never before been made by a club, and it was considered an extremely novel idea. The Etonians took the lead in the final when Harry Goodhart scored during the first half, however Arthur Matthews equalised for Olympic in the second half. Soon afterwards, Arthur Dunn was injured and forced to leave the field, reducing the Etonians to ten men for the rest of the match. The scores remained level at the end of the regulation ninety minutes. Under the regulations of the FA Cup, thirty minutes of extra time could be played in the event of a draw, at the referee's discretion, and in response to the fervent mood of the crowd the captains asked to play on to try to secure a result. During the extra period, Olympic's superior stamina began to show. Around twenty minutes into extra time, Jimmy Costley received a pass from John Yates and kicked the ball past Etonian goalkeeper John Rawlinson to score the winning goal. Upon the team's return to Blackburn, the players took part in a celebratory parade and received a civic reception at which team captain Albert Warburton reportedly proclaimed "The Cup is very welcome to Lancashire. It'll have a good home and it'll never go back to London." Olympic were the first team from a working-class background to win the FA Cup. In the south, however, Olympic's victory over one of the great amateur teams provoked consternation. At the time, The Football Association (the FA), the sport's governing body, prohibited clubs from paying their players. Despite this, working-class clubs, especially those based in Lancashire, had been widely suspected of making illicit payments to players since at least 1876. In the wake of Olympic's high-profile victory, journalists and officials affiliated with southern amateur clubs intensified their calls for the FA to investigate the finances of northern clubs. They focussed in particular on Olympic's training excursion to Blackpool, suggesting that the players would not have been able to take so much time off work unless the club was paying them some form of wage. Questions were also asked about players who had relocated from one town to another seemingly for the sole purpose of playing for a new football team. In Olympic's case Jack Hunter had moved from Sheffield to join the club. Ultimately no action was taken against Olympic, although punishments were imposed on other clubs, including Preston North End, who were expelled from the FA Cup. This in turn prompted the northern clubs to make plans to break away from the FA and form a rival governing body which would not impose the so-called "amateur ideal" on clubs. ### Decline and collapse The following season, Olympic again reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup, as did Blackburn Rovers. When the draw for the semi-finals was made, Olympic were paired with Queen's Park in one match and Rovers with Notts County in the other, setting up the possibility of the two teams meeting in the final. The Olympic team, however, were outclassed and defeated 4–0 by their Scottish opponents. The club lodged an appeal with the FA based on the encroachment onto the pitch of some of the 16,000 spectators, but to no avail. Rovers went on to defeat Queen's Park in the final. The club was never again able to achieve this level of success. In the 1884–85 season, Olympic lost in the second round of the FA Cup to rivals Rovers, who went on to cement their position as the town's leading team by winning the competition for the second consecutive season. The threat of a schism within the sport was averted in 1885 when the FA agreed to legalise professionalism. In a town the size of Blackburn, however, Olympic found it hard to compete for spectators and sponsors with the longer-established and more successful Rovers, and as a result could not pay wages on a par with those offered by that club or by other professional clubs in Lancashire. In 1886 the club's committee was forced to reduce the players' wages to a quarter of what was being offered by Preston North End. Many of the team's key players walked out in response and were quickly signed by wealthier clubs. The Football League, the world's first association football league, was formed in 1888 by the leading clubs of the Midlands and North. Aston Villa chairman William McGregor, the driving force behind the new competition, put in place a rule stating that only one club from each town or city could join, and chose Rovers, rather than Olympic, to be Blackburn's entrant. Some of the clubs not invited to join the League, including Olympic, formed The Combination, but this was a poorly organised competition which attracted only small crowds and collapsed before the end of the 1888–89 season. Beset by heavy debts, the club's committee announced in early 1889 that all professional players were being released from their contracts with immediate effect and that henceforth the club would employ only amateur players. This desperate measure came too late to save the club, which closed down in September 1889. Blackburn Olympic's last match was a defeat away to Everton. ## Stadia and supporters Olympic's first match took place on a pitch owned by the Blackburn Cricket Club, situated in open countryside at Higher Oozebooth. For the first eighteen months of the club's existence, Olympic played home matches at various sites in Blackburn, including Roe Lee and Cob Wall. In 1879 the club's committee secured the lease on a pitch adjacent to the Hole-i'-th'-Wall public house, at the top of the Shear Brow hill. The site had previously been used by another club, Queen's Own, but had been left vacant when that club folded after most of its players defected to Blackburn Rovers. The playing surface sloped downwards and was initially known for being exceptionally muddy, but in 1880 the club's committee spent £100 improving the drainage. Facilities were minimal and most spectators simply stood around the perimeter of the pitch, as was the case at most football grounds at the time. A grandstand was erected behind one goal in 1881, but it was severely damaged in a storm in 1884 and was replaced by a more elaborate structure along one of the long sides of the playing area. At the same time several other shelters were erected to give spectators in other areas cover from the elements. The largest crowd registered at Hole-i'-th'-Wall was approximately 10,000 for a match against Preston North End in November 1884, but crowds of between 1,000 and 2,000 spectators were the norm at Olympic matches. After the club's demise the pitch was taken over by the Blackburn Railway Clerks Club. It is now the site of St. Mary's College. ## Colours At the start of the club's existence, the players usually wore magenta shirts, although the rules regarding kits were less rigid at the time, and half-back Tommy Gibson insisted on wearing a supposedly lucky amber and black hooped shirt, a practice later copied by teammate Alf Astley. When the club entered the FA Cup for the first time in 1880, competition regulations meant that all the players in the team had to wear matching colours, and a new combination of light blue shirts and white shorts was chosen. When there was a clash of colours with the opposition and Olympic were the team obliged to change, the players wore dark blue shirts and white shorts. There is no record of the club having a badge or crest, although photographs of the FA Cup-winning team show several players with the crest of the Lancashire FA sewn onto their shirts, indicating that they had represented Lancashire in inter-county matches. ## Players The club's FA Cup winning team of 1883 comprised eleven players born in England, the first time an all-English XI had won the competition. The team lined up as follows: James Ward was the only player to be selected for the England team while on the books of the club. He won one cap, against Wales in 1885. Tommy Dewhurst was originally chosen for an international match in 1884, but was deselected after he was involved in a fight with an opposition player during a match between Olympic and Northwich Victoria. Six other Olympic players represented England either before or after their time with the club: Joe Beverley, Edgar Chadwick, Jack Hunter, Jack Southworth, William Townley and John Yates. ## Officials The concept of a football manager did not exist in the 19th century, although some modern sources identify Jack Hunter as having been the team's manager. Hunter's main responsibility was for the coaching of the players, although in the club's later years he also took charge of seeking out and signing promising amateur players. The club's benefactor, Sydney Yates, held the post of president and his brother Fred served as chairman of the club's committee. The majority of the administration of the club was handled by the secretary, a post held for most of the club's existence by Bill Bramham. ## Honours The club won the following trophies: - FA Cup - 1883 - East Lancashire Charity Cup - 1882 - Blackburn Association Challenge Cup - 1879, 1880 - Livesey United Cup - 1878 The only competition the club entered but never won, other than the unfinished Combination, was the Lancashire Senior Cup. ## Rivalries Blackburn Olympic's chief rivalry was with Blackburn Rovers. The first match between the two clubs was a game in February 1879, which resulted in a 3–1 win for Olympic. The clubs played each other forty times, but Olympic won only six of these matches. The rivalry became especially fierce in September 1884, when, amid accusations that the clubs were using underhand tactics in attempts to "poach" each other's star players, the Rovers' secretary sent a telegram to his opposite number stating that his club would play no matches against Olympic in the 1884–85 season. In December, however, the clubs were drawn against each other in the FA Cup, and matches between the rivals resumed later that season. Their final meeting was a benefit match for Olympic in February 1889, which Rovers won 6–1. Rovers agreed to allow the financially embarrassed Olympic to keep all available gate money, instead of sharing it. ## In popular culture A Blackburn-based team and its victory in the 1883 FA Cup final is the focus of the 2020 Netflix mini-series The English Game, although the club is only referred to as "Blackburn" and includes players who, although genuine, did not actually play for Olympic.

Banksia oblongifolia

Species of plant

Banksia oblongifolia, commonly known as the fern-leaved, dwarf or rusty banksia, is a species in the plant genus Banksia. Found along the eastern coast of Australia from Wollongong, New South Wales in the south to Rockhampton, Queensland in the north, it generally grows in sandy soils in heath, open forest or swamp margins and wet areas. A many-stemmed shrub up to 3 m (9.8 ft) high, it has leathery serrated leaves and rusty-coloured new growth. The yellow flower spikes, known as inflorescences, most commonly appear in autumn and early winter. Up to 80 follicles, or seed pods, develop on the spikes after flowering. Banksia oblongifolia resprouts from its woody lignotuber after bushfires, and the seed pods open and release seed when burnt, the seed germinating and growing on burnt ground. Some plants grow between fires from seed shed spontaneously. Spanish botanist Antonio José Cavanilles described B. oblongifolia in 1800, though it was known as Banksia aspleniifolia in New South Wales for many years. However, the latter name, originally coined by Richard Anthony Salisbury, proved invalid, and Banksia oblongifolia has been universally adopted as the correct scientific name since 1981. Two varieties were recognised in 1987, but these have not been generally accepted. A wide array of mammals, birds, and invertebrates visit the inflorescences. Though easily grown as a garden plant, it is not commonly seen in horticulture. ## Description Banksia oblongifolia is a shrub that can reach 3 m (9.8 ft) high, though is generally less than 2 m (6.6 ft) high, with several stems growing out of a woody base known as a lignotuber. The smooth bark is marked with horizontal lenticels, and is reddish-brown fading to greyish-brown with age. New leaves and branchlets are covered with a rusty fur. The leaves lose their fur and become smooth with maturity, and are alternately arranged along the stem. Measuring 5–11 cm (2.0–4.3 in) in length and 1.5–2 cm (0.59–0.79 in) in width, the leathery green leaves are oblong to obovate (egg-shaped) or truncate with a recessed midvein and mildly recurved margins, which are entire at the base and serrate towards the ends of the leaves. The sinuses (spaces between the teeth) are U-shaped and teeth are 1–2 mm long. The leaf underside is whitish with a reticulated vein pattern and a raised central midrib. The leaves sit on 2–5 mm long petioles. Flowering has been recorded between January and October, with a peak in autumn and early winter (April to June). The inflorescences, or flower spikes, arise from the end of 1 to 5 year old branchlets, and often have a whorl of branchlets arising from the node or base. Measuring 5–15 cm (2.0–5.9 in) high and 4 cm (1.6 in) wide, the yellow spikes often have blue-grey tinged limbs in bud, though occasionally pinkish, mauve or mauve-blue limbs are seen. Opening to a pale yellow after anthesis, the spikes lose their flowers with age and swell to up to 17.5 cm (6.9 in) high and 4 cm (1.6 in) wide, with up to 80 follicles. Covered with fine fur but becoming smooth with age, the oval-shaped follicles measure 1–1.8 cm (0.39–0.71 in) long by 0.2–0.7 cm high (0.1–0.3 in) and 0.3–0.7 cm (0.12–0.28 in) wide. The bare swollen spike, now known as an infructescence, is patterned with short spiky persistent bracts on its surface where follicles have not developed. Each follicle contains one or two obovate dark grey-brown to black seeds sandwiching a woody separator. Measuring 1.2–1.8 cm (0.47–0.71 in) long, they are made up of an oblong to semi-elliptic smooth or slightly ridged seed body, 0.7–1.1 cm (0.28–0.43 in) long by 0.3–0.7 cm (0.12–0.28 in) wide. The woody separator is the same shape as the seed, with an impression where the seed body lies next to it. Seedlings have bright obovate green cotyledons 1.2–1.5 cm (0.47–0.59 in) long and 0.5–0.7 cm (0.20–0.28 in) wide, which sit on a stalk, or 1 mm diameter finely hairy seedling stem, known as the hypocotyl, which is less than 1 cm high. The first seedling leaves to emerge are paired (oppositely arranged) and lanceolate with fine-toothed margins, measuring 2.5–3 cm long and 0.4–0.5 cm wide. Subsequent leaves are more oblanceolate, elliptic (oval-shaped) or linear. Young plants develop a lignotuber in their first year. Banksia oblongifolia can be distinguished from B. robur, which it often co-occurs with, by its smaller leaves and bare fruiting spikes. B. robur has more metallic green flower spikes, and often grows in wetter areas within the same region. B. plagiocarpa has longer leaves with more coarsely serrated margins, and its flower spikes are blue-grey in bud, and later bear wedge-shaped follicles. In the Sydney Basin, B. paludosa also bears a superficial resemblance to B. oblongifolia, but its leaves are more prominently spathulate (spoon-shaped) and tend to point up rather than down. The leaf undersides are white and lack the prominent midrib of B. oblongifolia, the new growth is bare and lacks the rusty fur, and the aged flower parts remain on the old spikes. ## Taxonomy First collected by Luis Née between March and April 1793, the fern-leaved banksia was described by Antonio José Cavanilles in 1800 as two separate species from two collections, first as Banksia oblongifolia from the vicinity of Port Jackson (Sydney), and then as Banksia salicifolia from around Botany Bay. Derived from the Latin words oblongus "oblong", and folium "leaf", the species name refers to the shape of the leaves. Richard Anthony Salisbury had published the name Banksia aspleniifolia in 1796 based on leaves of cultivated material. Robert Brown recorded 31 species of Banksia in his 1810 work Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen, and used the epithet oblongifolia in his taxonomic arrangement, placing the taxon in the subgenus Banksia verae, the "True Banksias", because the inflorescence is a typical Banksia flower spike. He recognised B. salicifolia as the same species at this point, but was unsure whether Salisbury's B. aspleniifolia belonged under the same name. By the time Carl Meissner published his 1856 arrangement of the genus, there were 58 described Banksia species. Meissner divided Brown's Banksia verae, which had been renamed Eubanksia by Stephan Endlicher in 1847, into four series based on leaf properties. He followed Brown in using the name B. oblongifolia, and placed it in the series Salicinae. In 1870, George Bentham published a thorough revision of Banksia in his landmark publication Flora Australiensis. In Bentham's arrangement, the number of recognised Banksia species was reduced from 60 to 46. He declared B. oblongifolia referrable to, and a synonym of, B. integrifolia. Bentham defined four sections based on leaf, style and pollen-presenter characters. B. integrifolia was placed in section Eubanksia. Botanists in the 20th century recognised B. oblongifolia as a species in its own right, but disagreed on the name. Those in Queensland felt Salisbury's name was invalid and used Banksia oblongifolia, while New South Wales authorities used Banksia aspleniifolia as it was the oldest published name for the species. Botanist and banksia authority Alex George ruled that oblongifolia was the correct name in his 1981 revision of the genus. After reviewing Salisbury's original species description, which is of the leaves alone, he concluded that it does not diagnose the species to the exclusion of others and is hence not a validly published name—the description could have applied to juvenile leaves of B. paludosa, B. integrifolia or even B. marginata. ### Placement within Banksia The current taxonomic arrangement of the genus Banksia is based on botanist Alex George's 1999 monograph for the Flora of Australia book series. In this arrangement, B. oblongifolia is placed in Banksia subgenus Banksia, because its inflorescences take the form of Banksia's characteristic flower spikes, section Banksia because of its straight styles, and series Salicinae because its inflorescences are cylindrical. In a morphological cladistic analysis published in 1994, Kevin Thiele placed it in the newly described subseries Acclives along with B. plagiocarpa, B. robur and B. dentata within the series Salicinae. However, this subgrouping of the Salicinae was not supported by George. B. oblongifolia's placement within Banksia may be summarised as follows: - Genus Banksia : Subgenus Isostylis : Subgenus Banksia : : Section Oncostylis : : Section Coccinea : : Section Banksia : : : Series Grandes : : : Series Banksia : : : Series Crocinae : : : Series Prostratae : : : Series Cyrtostylis : : : Series Tetragonae : : : Series Bauerinae : : : Series Quercinae : : : Series Salicinae : : : : B. dentata – B. aquilonia – B. integrifolia – B. plagiocarpa – B. oblongifolia – B. robur – B. conferta – B. paludosa – B. marginata – B. canei – B. saxicola Since 1998, American botanist Austin Mast and co-authors have been publishing results of ongoing cladistic analyses of DNA sequence data for the subtribe Banksiinae, which then comprised genera Banksia and Dryandra. Their analyses suggest a phylogeny that differs greatly from George's taxonomic arrangement. Banksia oblongifolia resolves as the closest relative, or "sister", to B. robur, with B. plagiocarpa as next closest relative. In 2007, Mast and Thiele rearranged the genus Banksia by merging Dryandra into it, and published B. subg. Spathulatae for the taxa having spoon-shaped cotyledons; thus B. subg. Banksia was redefined as encompassing taxa lacking spoon-shaped cotyledons. They foreshadowed publishing a full arrangement once DNA sampling of Dryandra was complete; in the meantime, if Mast and Thiele's nomenclatural changes are taken as an interim arrangement, B. oblongifolia is placed in B. subg. Spathulatae. ### Variation George noted that Banksia oblongifolia showed considerable variation in habit, and in 1987 Conran and Clifford separated the taxon into two subspecies. In examining populations in southern Queensland, they reported that the two forms were distinct in growth habit and habitat, and that they did not find any intermediate forms. New South Wales botanists Joseph Maiden and Julius Henry Camfield had collected this taller form of B. oblongifolia in Kogarah in 1898, and given it the name Banksia latifolia variety minor—B. latifolia being a published name by which B. robur was known—before Maiden and Ernst Betche renamed it Banksia robur variety minor. This name (confusingly) thus became the name for the taller variety. They defined variety oblongifolia as a multistemmed shrub 0.5–1.3 m (20–51 in) high, with leaves 3–11 cm (1.2–4.3 in) long and 1–2.5 cm (0.39–0.98 in) wide, and flower spikes 4–10 cm (1.6–3.9 in) high. The habitat is swamps and swamp borders, or rarely sandstone ridges. Variety minor is a taller shrub 1–3.5 m (3.3–11.5 ft) high with leaves up to 16 cm (6.3 in) long and spikes 6 to 14 cm (2.4 to 5.5 in) high. It is an understory plant in sclerophyll forests, associated with Eucalyptus signata and Banksia spinulosa var. collina. Both subspecies occur throughout the range. However, George rejected the varieties, stating the variability was continuous. ### Hybridization Banksia robur and B. oblongifolia hybrids have been recorded at several locations along the eastern coastline. Field workers for The Banksia Atlas recorded 20 populations between Wollongong and Pialba in central Queensland. Locales include Calga north of Sydney, Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, and Cordeaux Dam near Wollongong. A study of an area of extensive hybridization between the two near Darkes Forest on the Woronora Plateau south of Sydney revealed extensive hybridization in mixed species stands but almost none in pure stands of either species there. Genetic analysis showed generations of crossing and complex ancestry. Morphology generally correlated with genetic profile, but occasionally plants that resembled one parent had some degree of genetic hybridization. Furthermore, there were a few plants with morphology suggestive of a third species, B. paludosa, in their parentage, and requiring further investigation. A possible hybrid between B. oblongifolia and B. integrifolia was recorded near Caloundra by Banksia Atlas volunteers. ## Distribution and habitat Banksia oblongifolia occurs along the eastern coast of Australia from Wollongong, New South Wales, in the south to Rockhampton, Queensland, in the north. There are isolated populations offshore on Fraser Island, and inland at Blackdown Tableland National Park and Crows Nest in Queensland, and also inland incursions at the base of the Glasshouse Mountains in southern Queensland, at Grafton in northern New South Wales, and Bilpin and Lawson in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. B. oblongifolia grows in a range of habitats—in damp areas with poor drainage, along the edges of swamps and flats, as well as wallum shrubland, or coastal plateaux. It is also found in open forest or woodland, where it grows on ridges or slopes, or heath. Soils are predominantly sandy or sandstone-based, though granite-based and clay-loams are sometimes present. Associated species in the Sydney region include heathland species such as heath banksia (Banksia ericifolia), coral heath (Epacris microphylla) and mountain devil (Lambertia formosa), and tick bush (Kunzea ambigua) and prickly-leaved paperbark (Melaleuca nodosa) in taller scrub, and under trees such as scribbly gum (Eucalyptus sclerophylla) and narrow-leaved apple (Angophora bakeri) in woodland. The Agnes Banks Woodland in western Sydney has been recognised by the New South Wales Government as an Endangered Ecological Community. Here, B. oblongifolia is an understory plant in low open woodland, with scribbly gum, narrow-leaved apple and old man banksia (B. serrata) as canopy trees, and wallum banksia (B. aemula), variable smoke-bush (Conospermum taxifolium), wedding bush (Ricinocarpos pinifolius), showy parrot-pea (Dillwynia sericea) and nodding geebung (Persoonia nutans) as other understory species. ## Ecology Banksia oblongifolia plants can live for more than 60 years. They respond to bushfire by resprouting from buds located on the large woody lignotuber. Larger lignotubers have the greatest number of buds, although buds are more densely spaced on smaller lignotubers. A 1988 field study in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park found that shoots grow longer after fire, particularly one within the previous four years, and that new buds grow within six months after a fire. These shoots are able to grow, flower and set seed two to three years after a fire. The woody infructescences also release seeds as their follicles are opened with heat, although a proportion do open spontaneously at other times. One field study in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park found 10% opened in the absence of bushfire, and that seeds germinated, and young plants do grow. Older plants are serotinous, that is, they store large numbers of seed in an aerial seed bank in their canopy that are released after fire. Being relatively heavy, the seeds do not disperse far from the parent plant. Bird species that have been observed foraging and feeding at the flowers include the red wattlebird (Anthochaera carunculata), Lewin's honeyeater (Meliphaga lewinii), brown honeyeater (Lichmera indistincta), tawny-crowned honeyeater (Gliciphila melanops), yellow-faced honeyeater (Lichenostomus chrysops), white-plumed honeyeater (L. penicillatus), white-cheeked honeyeater (Phylidonyris niger), New Holland honeyeater (P. novaehollandiae), noisy friarbird (Philemon corniculatus), noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala) and eastern spinebill (Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris). Insects recorded visiting flower spikes include the European honey bee and ants. The swamp wallaby (Wallabia bicolor) eats new shoots that grow from lignotubers after bushfire. One field study found 30% of seeds were eaten by insects between bushfires. Insects recovered from inflorescences include the banksia boring moth (Arotrophora arcuatalis), younger instars of which eat flower and bract parts before tunneling into the woody axis of the spike as they get older and boring into follicles and eating seeds. Other seed predators include unidentified species of moth of the genera Cryptophasa and Xylorycta, as well as Scieropepla rimata, Chalarotona intabescens and Chalarotona melipnoa and an unidentified weevil species. The fungal species Asterina systema-solare, Episphaerella banksiae and Lincostromea banksiae have been recorded on the leaves. Like most other proteaceae, B. oblongifolia has proteoid roots—roots with dense clusters of short lateral rootlets that form a mat in the soil just below the leaf litter. These enhance solubilisation of nutrients, allowing nutrient uptake in low-nutrient soils such as the phosphorus-deficient native soils of Australia. A study of coastal heaths on Pleistocene sand dunes around the Myall Lakes found B. oblongifolia on slopes (wet heath) and B. aemula grew on ridges (dry heath), and the two species did not overlap. Manipulation of seedlings in the same study area showed that B. oblongifolia can grow longer roots seeking water than other wet heath species and that seedlings can establish in dry heath, but it is as yet unclear why the species does not grow in dry heath as well as wet heath. Unlike similar situations with Banksia species in Western Australia, the two species did not appear to impact negatively on each other. ## Cultivation Conrad Loddiges and his sons wrote of Banksia oblongifolia in volume 3 of their work The Botanical Cabinet in 1818, reporting it had been brought into cultivation in 1792, though had been initially and incorrectly called Banksia dentata. It flowered in November in the United Kingdom, and was grown in a greenhouse over winter. Not commonly cultivated, it adapts readily to garden conditions and tolerates most soils in part-shade or full sun. The colours of the inflorescences in bud, and timing of flowers into winter give it horticultural value, as does its reddish new growth. Larger plants have taller flower spikes. It is propagated readily from seed, with young plants taking five to seven years to flower from seed. Pruning can improve the shrub's appearance, and it is a potential bonsai subject.

Victoria Cross for New Zealand

Military decoration of the New Zealand Armed Forces

The Victoria Cross for New Zealand (VC; ) is a military decoration awarded for valour or gallantry in the presence of the enemy to members of the New Zealand Armed Forces. It may be awarded to a person of any rank in any service and civilians under military command, and is presented to the recipient by the governor-general of New Zealand during an investiture held at Government House, Wellington. As the highest award for gallantry in New Zealand it takes precedence over all other postnominals and medals. The Victoria Cross for New Zealand was established in 1999 when New Zealand created a new award system that replaced several British honours with New Zealand awards. It is based on the original British Victoria Cross introduced in 1856 by Queen Victoria to reward acts of valour during the Crimean War. The Victoria Cross for New Zealand has been awarded once, on 2 July 2007, to Lance Corporal Willie Apiata for actions in 2004. The medal itself is made of gunmetal derived from cannons captured by the British in 19th century campaigns in either Russia or China. Australia and Canada also have their own versions of the Victoria Cross which are used as the highest award for gallantry by military personnel of those countries. ## Origin ### Victoria Cross The original Victoria Cross (VC) was created by Queen Victoria in 1856 to recognise acts of gallantry performed by British military and naval personnel, both officers and enlisted men. It was to be the highest award for bravery that could be bestowed by The Crown. The Queen signed a royal warrant on 29 January 1856 that officially instituted the VC, and made it retroactive to 1854 to recognise acts of valour performed during the Crimean War. The VC medals were originally cast from ingots of gunmetal sourced from the cascabels of captured cannons, mostly likely captured during the siege of Sevastopol, in the Crimean War. Originally believed to have been Russian-made cannons, it has since been determined they originated from China so it is possible that they may have been captured during the British campaigns in that country. The metal is treated with chemicals to bring it to a bronze colour. A single company of jewellers, Hancocks of London, has been responsible for the production of every VC to date, including the prototypes. It is unclear who designed the medal but Queen Victoria had some input on its design after seeing drawings of the proposed medal and handling the proof example. The original specimen of the medal was approved on 3 March 1856 and formed the pattern for the subsequent VCs. The proof example is in the medal collection at Windsor Castle while the original specimen was initially retained by the Hancocks family. It was subsequently passed to the Royal Fusiliers which, as of 2016, has the medal in its museum. The VC has been awarded to 21 men serving in the New Zealand military, the first in 1867 to Major Charles Heaphy for actions in the Invasion of the Waikato, during the New Zealand Wars, and most recently, in 1946, to Squadron Leader Leonard Trent for his part in Operation Ramrod 16 during the Second World War. One recipient, Charles Upham, was awarded the VC twice. ### Separate Commonwealth awards In recent times, a number of Commonwealth countries have introduced their own honours systems, separate from the British honours system. In New Zealand, this process began in 1975 with the introduction of the Queen's Service Order, awarded to civilians, as a supplement to the British honours system. Twenty years later, with many honours now New Zealand-based, the New Zealand government undertook a review of the honours system. The review, conducted by a Honours Advisory Committee established by Prime Minister Jim Bolger, recommended the replacement of the existing British honours system with a New Zealand version. This extended to the introduction of New Zealand-based awards for gallantry, replacing existing British decorations such as the Distinguished Service Order and Distinguished Conduct Medal. ## Creation The Honours Advisory Committee devised four levels of awards for New Zealand military personnel to recognise acts of gallantry performed in wartime, or in war-like conditions, the latter intended to cover actions performed in peace-keeping. These awards did away with separate gallantry honours for officers and other ranks. In particular it was proposed that the existing VC, as the highest level of gallantry award, be replaced with the Victoria Cross for New Zealand. The proposal was announced in May 1998 and formally came into effect the following year, being instituted by Elizabeth II in her capacity as monarch of New Zealand. The Victoria Cross for New Zealand is awarded for: > ...most conspicuous gallantry, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy or of belligerents. New Zealand was not the first Commonwealth country to create its own VC; Australia was the first to do so, in 1991, followed by Canada two years later. ## Appearance The Victoria Cross for New Zealand is identical to the original design. The decoration is a cross pattée, having straight edges and approximately 36 millimetres (1.4 in) square, bearing a crown surmounted by a lion, and the inscription "For Valour". The cross is suspended by a ring from a seriffed "V" to a bar ornamented with laurel leaves, through which the ribbon passes. The reverse of the suspension bar is engraved with the recipient's name, rank, number and unit. On the reverse of the medal is a circular panel on which the date of the act for which it was awarded is engraved in the centre. The ribbon is crimson, 38 millimetres (1.5 in) wide. The decoration, suspension bar and link weigh about 27 grams (0.95 oz). The medal is worn on the left side of the chest, and precedes all other decorations worn by the recipient. A half size miniature medal may be worn on certain occasions in lieu of the medal itself and when wearing ribbons, a small bronze emblem as a representation of the Victoria Cross for New Zealand is affixed to the ribbon corresponding to the award. Recipients are entitled to a postnominal following their name, this being "VC". ## Conferment The power of awarding the medal officially resides with the monarch of New Zealand. The royal warrant states that the "Awards of a New Zealand Gallantry Award and of a Bar to an Award shall be made by Us, Our Heirs and Successors, only on a recommendation by Our Prime Minister of New Zealand or a Minister of the Crown acting for Our Prime Minister." As with the original VC, any recommendations pass through the New Zealand Defence Force chain of command to the Minister of Defence. As of 2024, the Victoria Cross for New Zealand has been awarded once, to Lance Corporal Willie Apiata of the Special Air Service of New Zealand (NZSAS). In mid-2004, his NZSAS troop, driving a number of vehicles, was on patrol in Afghanistan. Having visited a local village, the troop bivouacked on high ground for the night. Their campsite was spread out with some trucks, having not entered the village, obscured from view. In the night their main campsite came under attack. At the time, Apiata was asleep on the bonnet of his vehicle when it was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. Flung clear, he and two other men, one seriously wounded, took shelter behind their blown up vehicle. When gunfire from one of the obscured vehicles provided a distraction, Apiata led the trio to link up with the others of the troop although the wounded man could only cover a short distance before collapsing. Apiata picked up and carried him the rest of the way, despite heavy gunfire. After handing over his comrade to a medic, he found a weapon, having lost his at the start of the attack, and joined in the engagement. The attackers were driven off and in the morning, helicopters delivered replacement vehicles and extracted the wounded. The NZSAS troop, including Apiata, resumed their patrol, finishing 12 days later. After an investigation into the events of the patrol, the chief of the New Zealand Defence Force, Air Marshal Bruce Ferguson, recommended Apiata for the Victoria Cross for New Zealand. The nomination was given careful scrutiny given it was the first time that this award was being made. Helen Clark, then the prime minister of New Zealand, put forward the nomination to Buckingham Palace for royal assent. The award was publicly announced on 2 July 2007 and Apiata was invested with the medal at Government House in Wellington later that month, on 26 July. ## See also - Victoria Cross for Australia - Victoria Cross for Canada

Shunzhi Emperor

Emperor of China from 1644 to 1661

The Shunzhi Emperor (15 March 1638 – 5 February 1661), also known by his temple name Emperor Shizu of Qing, personal name Fulin, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the first Qing emperor to rule over China proper. Upon the death of his father Hong Taiji, a committee of Manchu princes chose the 5-year-old Fulin as successor. The princes also appointed two co-regents: Dorgon, the 14th son of Nurhaci, and Jirgalang, one of Nurhaci's nephews, both of whom were members of the Qing imperial clan. In November 1644, the Shunzhi Emperor was enthroned as emperor of China in Beijing. From 1643 to 1650, political power lay mostly in the hands of the prince regent Dorgon. Under his leadership, the Qing conquered most of the territory of the fallen Ming dynasty, chased Ming loyalist regimes deep into the southwestern provinces, and established the basis of Qing rule over China proper despite highly unpopular policies such as the "hair cutting command" of 1645, which forced all Qing male subjects to shave their forehead and braid their remaining hair into a queue resembling that of the Manchus. After Dorgon's death on the last day of 1650, the young Shunzhi Emperor started to rule personally. He tried, with mixed success, to fight corruption and to reduce the political influence of the Manchu nobility. In the 1650s, he faced a resurgence of Ming loyalist resistance, but by 1661 his armies had defeated the Qing's last enemies, Koxinga and the Prince of Gui, both of whom would succumb the following year. The Shunzhi Emperor died at the age of 22 of smallpox, a highly contagious disease that was endemic in China, but against which the Manchus had no immunity. He was succeeded by his third son who assumed the throne as the Kangxi Emperor and went on to reign for sixty years. Because fewer documents have survived from the Shunzhi era than from later eras of the Qing dynasty, this era is a relatively little-known period of Qing history. ## Historical background In the 1580s, when China was ruled by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), a number of Jurchen tribes lived in Manchuria. In a series of campaigns from the 1580s to the 1610s, Nurhaci (1559–1626), the leader of the Jianzhou Jurchens, unified most Jurchen tribes under his rule. One of his most important reforms was to integrate Jurchen clans under flags of four different colors—yellow, white, red, and blue—each further subdivided into two to form an encompassing social and military system known as the Eight Banners. Nurhaci gave control of these Banners to his sons and grandsons. Around 1612, Nurhaci renamed his clan Aisin Gioro ("golden Gioro" in the Manchu language), both to distinguish his family from other Gioro lines and to allude to an earlier dynasty that had been founded by Jurchens, the Jin ("golden") dynasty that had ruled northern China from 1115 to 1234. In 1616 Nurhaci formally announced the foundation of the "Later Jin" dynasty, effectively declaring his independence from the Ming. Over the next few years he wrested most major cities in Liaodong from Ming control. His string of victories ended in February 1626 at the siege of Ningyuan, where Ming commander Yuan Chonghuan defeated him with the help of recently acquired Portuguese cannon. Probably wounded during the battle, Nurhaci died a few months later. Nurhaci's son and successor Hong Taiji (1592–1643) continued his father's state-building efforts: he concentrated power into his own hands, modeled the Later Jin's government institutions on Chinese ones, and integrated Mongol allies and surrendered Chinese troops into the Eight Banners. In 1629 he led an incursion to the outskirts of Beijing, during which he captured Chinese craftsmen who knew how to cast Portuguese cannon. In 1635 Hong Taiji renamed the Jurchens the "Manchus", and in 1636 changed the name of his polity from "Later Jin" to "Qing". After capturing the last remaining Ming cities in Liaodong, by 1643 the Qing were preparing to attack the struggling Ming dynasty, which was crumbling under the combined weight of financial bankruptcy, devastating epidemics, and large-scale bandit uprisings fed by widespread starvation. ## Becoming emperor When Hong Taiji died on 21 September 1643 without having named a successor, the fledgling Qing state faced a possibly serious crisis. Several contenders—namely Nurhaci's second and eldest surviving son Daišan, Nurhaci's fourteenth and fifteenth sons Dorgon and Dodo (both born to the same mother), and Hong Taiji's eldest son Hooge—started to vie for the throne. With his brothers Dodo and Ajige, Dorgon (31 years old) controlled the Plain and Bordered White Banners, Daišan (60) was in charge of the two Red Banners, whereas Hooge (34) had the loyalty of his father's two Yellow Banners. The decision about who would become the new Qing emperor fell to the Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers, which was the Manchus' main policymaking body until the emergence of the Grand Council in the 1720s. Many Manchu princes argued that Dorgon, a proven military leader, should become the new emperor, but Dorgon refused and insisted that one of Hong Taiji's sons should succeed his father. To recognize Dorgon's authority while keeping the throne in Hong Taiji's descent line, the members of the council named Hong Taiji's ninth son, Fulin, as the new emperor, but decided that Dorgon and Jirgalang (a nephew of Nurhaci who controlled the Bordered Blue Banner) would act as the five-year-old child's regents. Fulin was officially crowned emperor of the Qing dynasty on 8 October 1643; it was decided that he would reign under the era name "Shunzhi." Because the Shunzhi reign is not well documented, it constitutes a relatively little-known period of Qing history. ## Dorgon's regency (1643–1650) ### A quasi emperor On 17 February 1644, Jirgalang, who was a capable military leader but looked uninterested in managing state affairs, willingly yielded control of all official matters to Dorgon. After an alleged plot by Hooge to undermine the regency was exposed on 6 May of that year, Hooge was stripped of his title of Imperial Prince and his co-conspirators were executed. Dorgon soon replaced Hooge's supporters (mostly from the Yellow Banners) with his own, thus gaining closer control of two more Banners. By early June 1644, he was in firm control of the Qing government and its military. In early 1644, just as Dorgon and his advisors were pondering how to attack the Ming, peasant rebellions were dangerously approaching Beijing. On 24 April of that year, rebel leader Li Zicheng breached the walls of the Ming capital, pushing the Chongzhen Emperor to hang himself on a hill behind the Forbidden City. Hearing the news, Dorgon's Chinese advisors Hong Chengchou and Fan Wencheng (范文程; 1597–1666) urged the Manchu prince to seize this opportunity to present themselves as avengers of the fallen Ming and to claim the Mandate of Heaven for the Qing. The last obstacle between Dorgon and Beijing was Ming general Wu Sangui, who was garrisoned at Shanhai Pass at the eastern end of the Great Wall. Himself caught between the Manchus and Li Zicheng's forces, Wu requested Dorgon's help in ousting the bandits and restoring the Ming. When Dorgon asked Wu to work for the Qing instead, Wu had little choice but to accept. Aided by Wu Sangui's elite soldiers, who fought the rebel army for hours before Dorgon finally chose to intervene with his cavalry, the Qing won a decisive victory against Li Zicheng at the Battle of Shanhai Pass on 27 May. Li's defeated troops looted Beijing for several days until Li left the capital on 4 June with all the wealth he could carry. ### Settling in the capital After six weeks of mistreatment at the hands of rebel troops, the Beijing population sent a party of elders and officials to greet their liberators on 5 June. They were startled when, instead of meeting Wu Sangui and the Ming heir apparent, they saw Dorgon, a horseriding Manchu with his shaved forehead, present himself as the Prince Regent. In the midst of this upheaval, Dorgon installed himself in the Wuying Palace (武英殿), the only building that remained more or less intact after Li Zicheng had set fire to the palace complex on 3 June. Banner troops were ordered not to loot; their discipline made the transition to Qing rule "remarkably smooth." Yet at the same time as he claimed to have come to avenge the Ming, Dorgon ordered that all claimants to the Ming throne (including descendants of the last Ming emperor) should be executed along with their supporters. On 7 June, just two days after entering the city, Dorgon issued special proclamations to officials around the capital, assuring them that if the local population accepted to shave their forehead, wear a queue, and surrender, the officials would be allowed to stay at their post. He had to repeal this command three weeks later after several peasant rebellions erupted around Beijing, threatening Qing control over the capital region. Dorgon greeted the Shunzhi Emperor at the gates of Beijing on 19 October 1644. On 30 October the six-year-old monarch performed sacrifices to Heaven and Earth at the Altar of Heaven. The southern cadet branch of Confucius' descendants who held the title Wujing boshi 五經博士 and the sixty-fifth generation descendant of Confucius to hold the title Duke Yansheng in the northern branch both had their titles reconfirmed on 31 October. A formal ritual of enthronement for Fulin was held on 8 November, during which the young emperor compared Dorgon's achievements to those of the Duke of Zhou, a revered regent from antiquity. During the ceremony, Dorgon's official title was raised from "Prince Regent" to "Uncle Prince Regent" (Shufu shezheng wang 叔父攝政王), in which the Manchu term for "Uncle" (ecike) represented a rank higher than that of imperial prince. Three days later Dorgon's co-regent Jirgalang was demoted from "Prince Regent" to "Assistant Uncle Prince Regent" (Fu zheng shuwang 輔政叔王). In June 1645, Dorgon eventually decreed that all official documents should refer to him as "Imperial Uncle Prince Regent" (Huang shufu shezheng wang 皇叔父攝政王), which left him one step short of claiming the throne for himself. One of Dorgon's first orders in the new Qing capital was to vacate the entire northern part of Beijing to give it to Bannermen, including Han Chinese Bannermen. The Yellow Banners were given the place of honor north of the palace, followed by the White Banners east, the Red Banners west, and the Blue Banners south. This distribution accorded with the order established in the Manchu homeland before the conquest and under which "each of the banners was given a fixed geographical location according to the points of the compass." Despite tax remissions and large-scale building programs designed to facilitate the transition, in 1648 many Chinese civilians still lived among the newly arrived Banner population and there was still animosity between the two groups. Agricultural land outside the capital was also marked off (quan 圈) and given to Qing troops. Former landowners now became tenants who had to pay rent to their absentee Bannermen landlords. This transition in land use caused "several decades of disruption and hardship." In 1646, Dorgon also ordered that the civil examinations for selecting government officials be reestablished. From then on they were held regularly every three years as under the Ming. In the very first palace examination held under Qing rule in 1646, candidates, most of whom were northern Chinese, were asked how the Manchus and Han Chinese could be made to work together for a common purpose. The 1649 examination inquired about "how Manchus and Han Chinese could be unified so that their hearts were the same and they worked together without division." Under the Shunzhi Emperor's reign, the average number of graduates per session of the metropolitan examination was the highest of the Qing dynasty ("to win more Chinese support"), until 1660 when lower quotas were established. To promote ethnic harmony, in 1648 an imperial decree formulated by Dorgon allowed Han Chinese civilians to marry women from the Manchu Banners, with the permission of the Board of Revenue if they were registered daughters of officials or commoners, or the permission of their banner company captain if they were unregistered commoners. Only later in the dynasty were these policies allowing intermarriage rescinded. ### Conquest of China proper Under the reign of Dorgon—whom historians have variously called "the mastermind of the Qing conquest" and "the principal architect of the great Manchu enterprise"—the Qing subdued almost all of China and pushed loyalist "Southern Ming" resistance into the far southwestern reaches of China. After repressing anti-Qing revolts in Hebei and Shandong in the Summer and Fall of 1644, Dorgon sent armies to root out Li Zicheng from the important city of Xi'an (Shaanxi province), where Li had reestablished his headquarters after fleeing Beijing in early June 1644. Under the pressure of Qing armies, Li was forced to leave Xi'an in February 1645, and he was killed—either by his own hand or by a peasant group that had organized for self-defense in this time of rampant banditry—in September 1645 after fleeing though several provinces. From newly captured Xi'an, in early April 1645 the Qing mounted a campaign against the rich commercial and agricultural region of Jiangnan south of the lower Yangtze River, where in June 1644 a Ming imperial prince had established a regime loyal to the Ming. Factional bickering and numerous defections prevented the Southern Ming from mounting an efficient resistance. Several Qing armies swept south, taking the key city of Xuzhou north of the Huai River in early May 1645 and soon converging on Yangzhou, the main city on the Southern Ming's northern line of defense. Bravely defended by Shi Kefa, who refused to surrender, Yangzhou fell to Manchu artillery on 20 May after a one-week siege. Dorgon's brother Prince Dodo then ordered the slaughter of Yangzhou's entire population. As intended, this massacre terrorized other Jiangnan cities into surrendering to the Qing. Indeed, Nanjing surrendered without a fight on 16 June after its last defenders had made Dodo promise he would not hurt the population. The Qing soon captured the Ming emperor (who died in Beijing the following year) and seized Jiangnan's main cities, including Suzhou and Hangzhou; by early July 1645, the frontier between the Qing and the Southern Ming had been pushed south to the Qiantang River. On 21 July 1645, after Jiangnan had been superficially pacified, Dorgon issued a most inopportune edict ordering all Chinese men to shave their forehead and to braid the rest of their hair into a queue identical to those of the Manchus. The punishment for non-compliance was death. This policy of symbolic submission helped the Manchus in telling friend from foe. For Han officials and literati, however, the new hairstyle was shameful and demeaning (because it breached a common Confucian directive to preserve one's body intact), whereas for common folk cutting their hair was the same as losing their virility. Because it united Chinese of all social backgrounds into resistance against Qing rule, the hair cutting command greatly hindered the Qing conquest. The defiant population of Jiading and Songjiang was massacred by former Ming general Li Chengdong (李成東; d. 1649), respectively on 24 August and 22 September. Jiangyin also held out against about 10,000 Qing troops for 83 days. When the city wall was finally breached on 9 October 1645, the Qing army led by Ming defector Liu Liangzuo (劉良佐; d. 1667) massacred the entire population, killing between 74,000 and 100,000 people. These massacres ended armed resistance against the Qing in the Lower Yangtze. A few committed loyalists became hermits, hoping that for lack of military success, their withdrawal from the world would at least symbolize their continued defiance against foreign rule. After the fall of Nanjing, two more members of the Ming imperial household created new Southern Ming regimes: one centered in coastal Fujian around the "Longwu Emperor" Zhu Yujian, Prince of Tang—a ninth-generation descendant of Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang—and one in Zhejiang around "Regent" Zhu Yihai, Prince of Lu. But the two loyalist groups failed to cooperate, making their chances of success even lower than they already were. In July 1646, a new Southern Campaign led by Prince Bolo sent Prince Lu's Zhejiang court into disarray and proceeded to attack the Longwu regime in Fujian. Zhu Yujian was caught and summarily executed in Tingzhou (western Fujian) on 6 October. His adoptive son Koxinga fled to the island of Taiwan with his fleet. Finally in November, the remaining centers of Ming resistance in Jiangxi province fell to the Qing. In late 1646 two more Southern Ming monarchs emerged in the southern province of Guangzhou, reigning under the era names of Shaowu (紹武) and Yongli. Short of official costumes, the Shaowu court had to purchase robes from local theater troops. The two Ming regimes fought each other until 20 January 1647, when a small Qing force led by Li Chengdong captured Guangzhou, killed the Shaowu Emperor, and sent the Yongli court fleeing to Nanning in Guangxi. In May 1648, however, Li mutinied against the Qing, and the concurrent rebellion of another former Ming general in Jiangxi helped Yongli to retake most of south China. This resurgence of loyalist hopes was short-lived. New Qing armies managed to reconquer the central provinces of Huguang (present-day Hubei and Hunan), Jiangxi, and Guangdong in 1649 and 1650. The Yongli emperor had to flee again. Finally on 24 November 1650, Qing forces led by Shang Kexi captured Guangzhou and massacred the city's population, killing as many as 70,000 people. Meanwhile, in October 1646, Qing armies led by Hooge (the son of Hong Taiji who had lost the succession struggle of 1643) reached Sichuan, where their mission was to destroy the kingdom of bandit leader Zhang Xianzhong. Zhang was killed in a battle against Qing forces near Xichong in central Sichuan on 1 February 1647. Also late in 1646 but further north, forces assembled by a Muslim leader known in Chinese sources as Milayin (米喇印) revolted against Qing rule in Ganzhou (Gansu). He was soon joined by another Muslim named Ding Guodong (丁國棟). Proclaiming that they wanted to restore the Ming, they occupied a number of towns in Gansu, including the provincial capital Lanzhou. These rebels' willingness to collaborate with non-Muslim Chinese suggests that they were not only driven by religion. Both Milayin and Ding Guodong were captured and killed by Meng Qiaofang (孟喬芳; 1595–1654) in 1648, and by 1650 the Muslim rebels had been crushed in campaigns that inflicted heavy casualties. ## Transition and personal rule (1651–1661) ### Purging Dorgon's clique Dorgon's unexpected death on 31 December 1650 during a hunting trip triggered a period of fierce factional struggles and opened the way for deep political reforms. Because Dorgon's supporters were still influential at court, Dorgon was given an imperial funeral and was posthumously elevated to imperial status as the "Righteous Emperor" (yi huangdi 義皇帝). On the same day of mid-January 1651, however, several officers of the White Banners led by former Dorgon supporter Ubai arrested Dorgon's brother Ajige for fear he would proclaim himself as the new regent; Ubai and his officers then named themselves presidents of several Ministries and prepared to take charge of the government. Meanwhile, Jirgalang, who had been stripped of his title of regent in 1647, gathered support among Banner officers who had been disgruntled during Dorgon's rule. In order to consolidate support for the emperor in the two Yellow Banners (which had belonged to the Qing monarch since Hong Taiji) and to gain followers in Dorgon's Plain White Banner, Jirgalang named them the "Upper Three Banners" (shang san qi 上三旗; Manchu: dergi ilan gūsa), which from then on were owned and controlled by the emperor. Oboi and Suksaha, who would become regents for the Kangxi Emperor in 1661, were among the Banner officers who gave Jirgalang their support, and Jirgalang appointed them to the Council of Deliberative Princes to reward them. On 1 February, Jirgalang announced that the Shunzhi Emperor, who was about to turn thirteen, would now assume full imperial authority. The regency was thus officially abolished. Jirgalang then moved to the attack. In late February or early March 1651 he accused Dorgon of usurping imperial prerogatives: Dorgon was found guilty and all his posthumous honors were removed. Jirgalang continued to purge former members of Dorgon's clique and to bestow high ranks and nobility titles upon a growing number of followers in the Three Imperial Banners, so that by 1652 all of Dorgon's former supporters had been either killed or effectively removed from government. ### Factional politics and the fight against corruption On 7 April 1651, barely two months after he seized the reins of government, the Shunzhi Emperor issued an edict announcing that he would purge corruption from officialdom. This edict triggered factional conflicts among literati that would frustrate him until his death. One of his first gestures was to dismiss grand academician Feng Quan (馮銓; 1595–1672), a northern Chinese who had been impeached in 1645 but was allowed to remain in his post by Prince Regent Dorgon. The Shunzhi Emperor replaced Feng with Chen Mingxia (ca. 1601–1654), an influential southern Chinese with good connections in Jiangnan literary societies. Though later in 1651 Chen was also dismissed on charges of influence peddling, he was reinstated in his post in 1653 and soon became a close personal advisor to the sovereign. He was even allowed to draft imperial edicts just as Ming Grand Secretaries used to. Still in 1653, the Shunzhi Emperor decided to recall the disgraced Feng Quan, but instead of balancing the influence of northern and southern Chinese officials at court as the emperor had intended, Feng Quan's return only intensified factional strife. In several controversies at court in 1653 and 1654, the southerners formed one bloc opposed to the northerners and the Manchus. In April 1654, when Chen Mingxia spoke to northern official Ning Wanwo (寧完我; d. 1665) about restoring the style of dress of the Ming court, Ning immediately denounced Chen to the emperor and accused him of various crimes including bribe-taking, nepotism, factionalism, and usurping imperial prerogatives. Chen was executed by strangulation on 27 April 1654. In November 1657, a major cheating scandal erupted during the Shuntian provincial-level examinations in Beijing. Eight candidates from Jiangnan who were also relatives of Beijing officials had bribed examiners in the hope of being ranked higher in the contest. Seven examination supervisors found guilty of receiving bribes were executed, and several hundred people were sentenced to punishments ranging from demotion to exile and confiscation of property. The scandal, which soon spread to Nanjing examination circles, uncovered the corruption and influence-peddling that was rife in the bureaucracy, and that many moralistic officials from the north attributed to the existence of southern literary clubs and to the decline of classical scholarship. ### Chinese style of rule During his short reign, the Shunzhi Emperor encouraged Han Chinese to participate in government activities and revived many Chinese-style institutions that had been either abolished or marginalized during Dorgon's regency. He discussed history, classics, and politics with grand academicians such as Chen Mingxia (see previous section) and surrounded himself with new men such as Wang Xi (王熙; 1628–1703), a young northern Chinese who was fluent in Manchu. The "Six Edicts" (Liu yu 六諭) that the Shunzhi Emperor promulgated in 1652 were the predecessors to the Kangxi Emperor's "Sacred Edicts" (1670): "bare bones of Confucian orthodoxy" that instructed the population to behave in a filial and law-abiding fashion. In another move toward Chinese-style government, the sovereign reestablished the Hanlin Academy and the Grand Secretariat in 1658. These two institutions based on Ming models further eroded the power of the Manchu elite and threatened to revive the extremes of literati politics that had plagued the late Ming, when factions coalesced around rival grand secretaries. To counteract the power of the Imperial Household Department and the Manchu nobility, in July 1653 the Shunzhi Emperor established the Thirteen Offices (十三衙門), or Thirteen Eunuch Bureaus, which were supervised by Manchus, but manned by Chinese eunuchs rather than Manchu bondservants. Eunuchs had been kept under tight control during Dorgon's regency, but the young emperor used them to counter the influence of other power centers such as his mother the Empress Dowager and former regent Jirgalang. By the late 1650s eunuch power became formidable again: they handled key financial and political matters, offered advice on official appointments, and even composed edicts. Because eunuchs isolated the monarch from the bureaucracy, Manchu and Chinese officials feared a return to the abuses of eunuch power that had plagued the late Ming. Despite the emperor's attempt to impose strictures on eunuch activities, the Shunzhi Emperor's favorite eunuch Wu Liangfu (吳良輔; d. 1661), who had helped him defeat the Dorgon faction in the early 1650s, was caught in a corruption scandal in 1658. The fact that Wu only received a reprimand for his accepting bribes did not reassure the Manchu elite, which saw eunuch power as a degradation of Manchu power. The Thirteen Offices would be eliminated (and Wu Liangfu executed) by Oboi and the other regents of the Kangxi Emperor in March 1661 soon after the Shunzhi Emperor's death. ### Frontiers, tributaries, and foreign relations In 1646, when Qing armies led by Bolo had entered the city of Fuzhou, they had found envoys from the Ryūkyū Kingdom, Annam, and the Spanish in Manila. These tributary embassies that had come to see the now fallen Longwu Emperor of the Southern Ming were forwarded to Beijing, and eventually sent home with instructions about submitting to the Qing. The King of the Ryūkyū Islands sent his first tribute mission to the Qing in 1649, Siam in 1652, and Annam in 1661, after the last remnants of Ming resistance had been removed from Yunnan, which bordered Annam. Also in 1646 sultan Abu al-Muhammad Haiji Khan, a Moghul prince who ruled Turfan, had sent an embassy requesting the resumption of trade with China, which had been interrupted by the fall of the Ming dynasty. The mission was sent without solicitation, but the Qing agreed to receive it, allowing it to conduct tribute trade in Beijing and Lanzhou (Gansu). But this agreement was interrupted by a Muslim rebellion that engulfed the northwest in 1646 (see the last paragraph of the "Conquest of China" section above). Tribute and trade with Hami and Turfan, which had aided the rebels, were eventually resumed in 1656. In 1655, however, the Qing court announced that tributary missions from Turfan would be accepted only once every five years. In 1651 the young emperor invited to Beijing the Fifth Dalai Lama, the leader of the Yellow Hat Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, who, with the military help of Khoshot Mongol Gushri Khan, had recently unified religious and secular rule in Tibet. Qing emperors had been patrons of Tibetan Buddhism since at least 1621 under the reign of Nurhaci, but there were also political reasons behind the invitation. Namely, Tibet was becoming a powerful polity west of the Qing, and the Dalai Lama held influence over Mongol tribes, many of which had not submitted to the Qing. To prepare for the arrival of this "living Buddha," the Shunzhi Emperor ordered the building of the White Dagoba (baita 白塔) on an island on one of the imperial lakes northwest of the Forbidden City, at the former site of Qubilai Khan's palace. After more invitations and diplomatic exchanges to decide where the Tibetan leader would meet the Qing emperor, the Dalai Lama arrived in Beijing in January 1653. The Dalai Lama later had a scene of this visit carved in the Potala Palace in Lhasa, which he had started building in 1645. Meanwhile, north of the Manchu homeland, adventurers Vassili Poyarkov (1643–46) and Yerofei Khabarov (1649–53) had started to explore the Amur River valley for Tzarist Russia. In 1653 Khabarov was recalled to Moscow and replaced by Onufriy Stepanov, who assumed command of Khabarov's Cossack troops. Stepanov went south into the Sungari River, along which he exacted "yasak" (fur tribute) from native populations such as the Daur and the Duchers, but these groups resisted because they were already paying tribute to the Shunzhi Emperor ("Shamshakan" in Russian sources). In 1654 Stepanov defeated a small Manchu force that had been despatched from Ningguta to investigate Russian advances. In 1655 another Qing commander, the Mongol Minggadari (d. 1669), defeated Stepanov's forces at fort Kumarsk on the Amur, but this was not enough to chase the Russians. In 1658, however, Manchu general Šarhūda (1599–1659) attacked Stepanov with a fleet of 40 or more ships that managed to kill or capture most Russians. This Qing victory temporarily cleared the Amur valley of Cossack bands, but Sino-Russian border conflicts would continue until 1689, when the signature of the Treaty of Nerchinsk fixed the borders between Russia and the Qing. ### Continuous campaigns against the Southern Ming Though the Qing under Dorgon's leadership had successfully pushed the Southern Ming deep into southern China, Ming loyalism was not dead yet. In early August 1652, Li Dingguo, who had served as general in Sichuan under bandit king Zhang Xianzhong (d. 1647) and was now protecting the Yongli Emperor of the Southern Ming, retook Guilin (Guangxi province) from the Qing. Within a month, most of the commanders who had been supporting the Qing in Guangxi reverted to the Ming side. Despite occasionally successful military campaigns in Huguang and Guangdong in the next two years, Li failed to retake important cities. In 1653, the Qing court put Hong Chengchou in charge of retaking the southwest. Headquartered in Changsha (in what is now Hunan province), he patiently built up his forces; only in late 1658 did well-fed and well-supplied Qing troops mount a multipronged campaign to take Guizhou and Yunnan. In late January 1659, a Qing army led by Manchu prince Doni took the capital of Yunnan, sending the Yongli Emperor fleeing into nearby Burma, which was then ruled by King Pindale Min of the Toungoo dynasty. The last sovereign of the Southern Ming stayed there until 1662, when he was captured and executed by Wu Sangui, the former Ming general whose surrender to the Manchus in April 1644 had allowed Dorgon to start the Qing conquest of China. Zheng Chenggong ("Koxinga"), who had been adopted by the Longwu Emperor in 1646 and ennobled by Yongli in 1655, also continued to defend the cause of the Southern Ming. In 1659, just as the Shunzhi Emperor was preparing to hold a special examination to celebrate the glories of his reign and the success of the southwestern campaigns, Zheng sailed up the Yangtze River with a well-armed fleet, took several cities from Qing hands, and went so far as to threaten Nanjing. When the emperor heard of this sudden attack he is said to have slashed his throne with a sword in anger. But the siege of Nanjing was relieved and Zheng Chenggong repelled, forcing Zheng to take refuge in the southeastern coastal province of Fujian. Pressured by Qing fleets, Zheng fled to Taiwan in April 1661 but died that same summer. His descendants resisted Qing rule until 1683, when the Kangxi Emperor successfully took the island. ### Personality and relationships After Fulin came to rule on his own in 1651, his mother the Empress Dowager Zhaosheng arranged for him to marry her niece, but the young monarch deposed his new Empress in 1653. The following year Xiaozhuang arranged another imperial marriage with her Khorchin Mongol clan, this time matching her son with her own grand-niece. Though Fulin also disliked his second empress (known posthumously as Empress Xiaohuizhang), he was not allowed to demote her. She never bore him children. Starting in 1656, the Shunzhi Emperor lavished his affection on Consort Donggo, who, according to Jesuit accounts from the time, had first been the wife of another Manchu noble. She gave birth to a son (the Shunzhi Emperor's fourth) in November 1657. The emperor would have made him his heir apparent, but he died early in 1658 before he was given a name. The Shunzhi Emperor was an open-minded emperor and relied on the advice of Johann Adam Schall von Bell, a Jesuit missionary from Cologne in the Germanic parts of the Holy Roman Empire, for guidance on matters ranging from astronomy and technology to religion and government. In late 1644, Dorgon had put Schall in charge of preparing a new calendar because his eclipse predictions had proven more reliable than those of the official astronomer. After Dorgon's death Schall developed a personal relationship with the young emperor, who called him "grandfather" (mafa in Manchu). At the height of his influence in 1656 and 1657, Schall reports that the Shunzhi Emperor often visited his house and talked to him late into the night. He was excused from prostrating himself in the presence of the emperor, was granted land to build a church in Beijing, and was even given imperial permission to adopt a son (because Fulin worried that Schall did not have an heir), but the Jesuits' hope of converting the Qing sovereign to Christianity was crushed when the Shunzhi Emperor became a devout follower of Chan Buddhism in 1657. The emperor developed a good command of Chinese that allowed him to manage matters of state and to appreciate Chinese arts such as calligraphy and drama. One of his favorite texts was "Rhapsody of a Myriad Sorrows" (Wan chou qu 萬愁曲), by Gui Zhuang (歸莊; 1613–1673), who was a close friend of anti-Qing intellectuals Gu Yanwu and Wan Shouqi (萬壽祺; 1603–1652). "Quite passionate and attach[ing] great importance to qing (love)," he could also recite by heart long passages of the popular Romance of the Western Chamber. ## Death and succession ### Smallpox In September 1660, Consort Donggo, the Shunzhi Emperor's favourite consort, suddenly died as a result of grief over the loss of a child. Overwhelmed with grief, the emperor fell into dejection for months, until he contracted smallpox on 2 February 1661. On 4 February 1661, officials Wang Xi (王熙, 1628–1703; the emperor's confidant) and Margi (a Manchu) were called to the emperor's bedside to record his last will. On the same day, his seven-year-old third son Xuanye was chosen to be his successor, probably because he had already survived smallpox. The emperor died on 5 February 1661 in the Forbidden City at the age of twenty-two. The Manchus feared smallpox more than any other disease because they had no immunity to it and almost always died when they contracted it. By 1622 at the latest, they had already established an agency to investigate smallpox cases and isolate sufferers to avoid contagion. During outbreaks, royal family members were routinely sent to "smallpox avoidance centers" (bidousuo 避痘所) to protect themselves from infection. The Shunzhi Emperor was particularly fearful of the disease, because he was young and lived in a large city, near sources of contagion. Indeed, during his reign at least nine outbreaks of smallpox were recorded in Beijing, each time forcing the emperor to move to a protected area such as the "Southern Park" (Nanyuan 南苑), a hunting ground south of Beijing where Dorgon had built a "smallpox avoidance center" in the 1640s. Despite this and other precautions—such as rules forcing Chinese residents to move out of the city when they contracted smallpox—the young monarch still succumbed to that illness. ### Forged last will The emperor's last will, which was made public on the evening of 5 February, appointed four regents for his young son: Oboi, Soni, Suksaha, and Ebilun, who had all helped Jirgalang to purge the court of Dorgon's supporters after Dorgon's death on the last day of 1650. It is difficult to determine whether the Shunzhi Emperor had really named these four Manchu nobles as regents, because they and Empress Dowager Zhaosheng clearly tampered with the emperor's testament before promulgating it. The emperor's will expressed his regret about his Chinese-style ruling (his reliance on eunuchs and his favoritism toward Chinese officials), his neglect of Manchu nobles and traditions, and his headstrong devotion to his consort rather than to his mother. Though the emperor had often issued self-deprecating edicts during his reign, the policies his will rejected had been central to his government since he had assumed personal rule in the early 1650s. The will as it was formulated gave "the mantle of imperial authority" to the four regents, and served to support their pro-Manchu policies during the period known as the Oboi regency, which lasted from 1661 to 1669. ### After death Because court statements did not clearly announce the cause of the emperor's death, rumors soon started to circulate that he had not died but in fact retired to a Buddhist monastery to live anonymously as a monk, either out of grief for the death of his beloved consort, or because of a coup by the Manchu nobles his will had named as regents. These rumors seemed not so incredible because the emperor had become a fervent follower of Chan Buddhism in the late 1650s, even letting monks move into the imperial palace. Modern Chinese historians have considered the Shunzhi Emperor's possible retirement as one of the three mysterious cases of the early Qing. But much circumstantial evidence—including an account by one of these monks that the emperor's health greatly deteriorated in early February 1661 because of smallpox, and the fact that a concubine and an Imperial Bodyguard committed suicide to accompany the emperor in burial—suggests that the Shunzhi Emperor's death was not staged. After being kept in the Forbidden City for 27 days of mourning, on 3 March 1661 the emperor's corpse was transported in a lavish procession to Jingshan 景山 (a hillock just north of the Forbidden City), after which a large amount of precious goods were burned as funeral offerings. Only two years later, in 1663, was the body transported to its final resting place. Contrary to Manchu customs at the time, which usually dictated that a deceased person should be cremated, the Shunzhi Emperor was buried. He was interred in what later came to be known as the Eastern Qing Tombs, 125 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of Beijing, one of two Qing imperial cemeteries. His tomb is part of the Xiao (孝) mausoleum complex (known in Manchu as the Hiyoošungga Munggan), which was the first mausoleum to be erected on that site. ## Legacy The fake will in which the Shunzhi Emperor had supposedly expressed regret for abandoning Manchu traditions gave authority to the nativist policies of the Kangxi Emperor's four regents. Citing the testament, Oboi and the other regents quickly abolished the Thirteen Eunuch Bureaus. Over the next few years, they enhanced the power of the Imperial Household Department, which was run by Manchus and their bondservants, eliminated the Hanlin Academy, and limited membership in the Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers to Manchus and Mongols. The regents also adopted aggressive policies toward the Qing's Chinese subjects: they executed dozens of people and punished thousands of others in the wealthy Jiangnan region for literary dissent and tax arrears, and forced the coastal population of southeast China to move inland in order to starve the Taiwan-based Kingdom of Tungning run by descendants of Koxinga. After the Kangxi Emperor managed to imprison Oboi in 1669, he reverted many of the regents' policies. He restored institutions his father had favored, including the Grand Secretariat, through which Chinese officials gained an important voice in government. He also defeated the rebellion of the Three Feudatories, three Chinese military commanders who had played key military roles in the Qing conquest, but had now become entrenched rulers of enormous domains in southern China. The civil war (1673–1681) tested the loyalty of the new Qing subjects, but Qing armies eventually prevailed. Once victory had become certain, a special examination for "eminent scholars of broad learning" (Boxue hongru 博學鴻儒) was held in 1679 to attract Chinese literati who had refused to serve the new dynasty. The successful candidates were assigned to compile the official history of the fallen Ming dynasty. The rebellion was defeated in 1681, the same year the Kangxi Emperor initiated the use of variolation to inoculate children of the imperial family against smallpox. When the Kingdom of Tungning finally fell in 1683, the military consolidation of the Qing regime was complete. The institutional foundation laid by Dorgon, and the Shunzhi and Kangxi emperors allowed the Qing to erect an imperial edifice of awesome proportion and to turn it into "one of the most successful imperial states the world has known." Ironically, however, the prolonged Pax Manchurica that followed the Kangxi consolidation made the Qing unprepared to face aggressive European powers with modern weaponry in the nineteenth century. ## Family Although only nineteen imperial consorts are recorded for the Shunzhi Emperor in the Aisin-Gioro genealogy made by the Imperial Clan Court, burial records show that he had at least thirty-two of them. There were two empresses in his reign, both relatives of his mother. He had a total of fourteen children, but only four sons (Fuquan, Xuanye, Changning, and Longxi) and one daughter (Princess Gongque) lived to be old enough to marry. Unlike later Qing emperors, the names of the Shunzhi Emperor's sons did not include a generational character. Before the Qing court moved to Beijing in 1644, Manchu women used to have personal names, but after 1644 these names "disappear from the genealogical and archival records". Imperial consorts were usually known by their titles and the name of their patrilineal clan, while imperial daughters were given a title and rank by which they then became known only after their betrothal. Although five of the Shunzhi Emperor's six daughters died in infancy or childhood, they all appear in the Aisin-Gioro genealogy. Empress - Consort Jing (靜妃) of the Khorchin Borjigin clan (博爾濟吉特氏), personal name Erdeni Bumba (額爾德尼布木巴) - Empress Xiaohuizhang (孝惠章皇后) of the Khorchin Borjigin clan (博爾濟吉特氏; 5 November 1641 – 7 January 1718), personal name Alatan Qiqige (阿拉坦琪琪格) - Empress Xiaoxian (孝獻皇后) of the Donggo clan (董鄂氏; 1639 – 23 September 1660) - Prince Rong of the First Rank (榮親王; 12 November 1657 – 25 February 1658), fourth son - Empress Xiaokangzhang (孝康章皇后) of the Tunggiya clan (佟佳氏; 1638 – 20 March 1663) - Xuanye (玄燁), the Kangxi Emperor (康熙帝; 4 May 1654 – 20 December 1722), third son Consort - Consort Dao (悼妃) of the Khorchin Borjigin clan (博爾濟吉特氏; ? – 7 April 1658) - Consort Zhen (貞妃) of the Donggo clan (董鄂氏; ? – 5 February 1661) - Consort Ke (恪妃) of the Shi clan (石氏; ? – 13 January 1668) - Consort Gongjing (恭靖妃) of the Hotsit Borjigin clan (博爾濟吉特氏; ? – 20 May 1689) - Consort Shuhui (淑惠妃) of the Khorchin Borjigin clan (博爾濟吉特氏; 1642 – 17 December 1713) - Consort Duanshun (端順妃) of the Abaga Borjigin clan (博爾濟吉特氏; ? – 1 August 1709) - Consort Ningque (寧愨妃) of the Donggo clan (董鄂氏; ? – 11 August 1694) - Fuquan (福全), Prince Yuxian of the First Rank (裕憲親王; 8 September 1653 – 10 August 1703), second son Concubine - Mistress (格格) of the Ba clan (巴氏) - Niuniu (牛鈕; 13 December 1651 – 9 March 1652), first son - Third daughter (30 January 1654 – April/May 1658) - Fifth daughter (6 February 1655 – January 1661) - Mistress (格格) of the Chen clan (陳氏; ? – 1690) - First daughter (22 April 1652 – November/December 1653) - Changning (常寧), Prince Gong of the First Rank (恭親王; 8 December 1657 – 20 July 1703), fifth son - Mistress (格格) of the Yang clan (楊氏) - Princess Gongque of the Second Rank (和碩恭愨公主; 19 January 1654 – 26 November 1685), second daughter - Married Na'erdu (訥爾杜; ? – 1676) of the Manchu Gūwalgiya clan in February/March 1667 - Fourth daughter (9 January 1655 – March/April 1661) - Mistress (格格) of the Nara clan (那拉氏) - Sixth daughter (11 November 1657 – March 1661) - Mistress (格格) of the Tang clan (唐氏) - Qishou (奇授; 3 January 1660 – 12 December 1665), sixth son - Mistress (格格) of the Niu clan (鈕氏) - Lunghi (隆禧), Prince Chunjing of the First Rank (純靖親王; 30 May 1660 – 20 August 1679), seventh son - Mistress (格格) of the Muktu clan (穆克圖氏) - Yonggan (永幹; 23 January 1661 – 15 January 1668), eighth son ## Ancestry ## In popular culture - Portrayed by Jung Yoon-seok in the 2013 TV series Blooded Palace: The War of Flowers. - Portrayed by an unknown voice actor in The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show episode "Sherman Exchange Program" under the name "Fulin". ## See also - Chinese emperors family tree (late) - Chronology of the Shunzhi reign - List of emperors of the Qing dynasty ## Explanatory notes

2016 World Snooker Championship

World championship snooker tournament, April–May 2016

The 2016 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2016 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 16 April to 2 May 2016 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 40th year that the World Snooker Championship had been held at the venue. The event was the tenth and last event that carried ranking points of the 2015–16 snooker season. Stuart Bingham was the defending champion, having defeated Shaun Murphy in the 2015 event final. Bingham lost 9–10 against Ali Carter in the first round, falling to the Crucible curse and becoming the 17th first-time champion unable to defend his title at the venue. Alan McManus and Ding Junhui set a record in their semi-final for the most century breaks achieved in a professional match, scoring ten. Ding also set a record for the most centuries by one player in a single World Championship match with seven. Ding defeated McManus to become the first Asian player to reach a World Championship final. In the other semi-final, Englishman Mark Selby and Hongkonger Marco Fu set a record for the longest of snooker ever played at the Crucible, at 76 minutes 11 seconds. After beating Robert Milkins 10–6, Sam Baird 13–11, Kyren Wilson 13–8, and Fu 17–15, Selby defeated Ding 18–14 in the final to claim his second World title, having won the 2014 event previously. A total of 86 century breaks were made at the event, the same number as the previous year; Kyren Wilson made the tournament's highest break of 143. The global audiences for the tournament exceeded 300 million, 210 million viewers in China alone. The afternoon sessions of the final were watched by audiences of 45 million in China, the country's largest audience for a sporting event that year. During the tournament, six-time champion Steve Davis played the last professional match of his 38-year career against Fergal O'Brien in the qualifier and announced his retirement during the first round of the event. ## Overview The World Snooker Championship is an annual cue sport tournament and is the official professional world championship of the game of snooker. The sport of snooker was founded in the late 19th century by British Army soldiers stationed in India. The world championship sees 32 professional players compete in one-on-one snooker matches in a single elimination format, each played over several . The 32 players for the event are selected through a mix of the world snooker rankings and pre-tournament qualification rounds. The first world championship was held in 1927 at Camkin's Hall, Birmingham, England, and was won by Joe Davis. Since 1977, the event has been held in the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. As of 2022, Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O’Sullivan are the event's most successful participants in the modern era, having both won the championship seven times. The previous year's championship had been won by England's Stuart Bingham, who defeated Shaun Murphy in the final 18–15. This was Bingham's first championship win. The winner of the 2016 event earned prize money of £330,000, from a total pool of £1.5 million. The event was the tenth and last ranking event of the 2015–2016 season. ### Prize fund The total prize money of the event was raised to £1,500,100 from £1,364,000 the previous year. The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below: - Winner: £330,000 - Runner-up: £137,500 - Semi-final: £66,000 - Quarter-final: £33,000 - Last 16: £22,000 - Last 32: £13,250 - Last 48: £9,900 - Last 80: £6,600 - Televised highest break: £10,000 - Total: £1,500,100 The prize for a maximum break stood at £20,000. ## Tournament summary ### Seeding and qualifying rounds The top 16 seeds automatically qualified for the first round. Defending champion Bingham was seeded first, and other seeded places were allocated based on the latest world rankings. Professional players below 17th place in rankings, and 16 invited amateur players started in the first round of qualifying, and were required to win three best-of-19-frame matches to reach the Crucible. Qualifying rounds were held at the Ponds Forge International Sports Centre in Sheffield from 6 to 13 April 2016. Eleven former world champions competed in the tournament. Six-time champion Davis lost 4–10 to Fergal O'Brien in the first round of qualifying, and subsequently announced his retirement from the sport after 38 years as a professional. The 1997 champion Ken Doherty lost 6–10 to Ryan Day in the final round of qualifying. Former world number one Ding Junhui was no longer in the top 16 ranked players before the tournament, and had to qualify to the Crucible. He did that with the loss of only seven frames, defeating Greg Casey 10–4, Ross Muir 10–1, and the 1995 runner-up Nigel Bond 10–2. Thepchaiya Un-Nooh missed the final in attempting a maximum break against Anthony McGill in the fourth frame of their final qualifying round match. Un-Nooh had also missed the last black in attempting a maximum break earlier in the season, in a match against Neil Robertson in the 2015 UK Championship. Hong Kong's Ng On-yee attempted to become the first woman ever to reach the main stage of the event; she lost 1–10 against Peter Lines in the first round of qualifying. ### First round The first round was played between 16 and 21 April as best-of-19-frame matches. Mitchell Mann was the only player making his Crucible debut. He lost 3–10 in the first round to Mark Allen. Steve Davis announced his retirement on live television during the tournament's first weekend, before play began on the first Sunday afternoon. Playing the defending champion Bingham, Ali Carter led 5–1 and 8–5 before Bingham won four consecutive frames to lead 9–8. Carter tied the match with a century break in the 18th frame, before taking the to win 10–9. The loss made Bingham the 17th player to succumb to the Crucible curse, as no first time defending champion won the event the following season. Shaun Murphy, the previous year's runner-up, also received a first-round exit when he lost 8–10 to McGill. This was the first time since the 1980 championship that both of the previous year's finalists lost the first matches they played upon their return. Stephen Maguire lost 7–10 to Alan McManus in his fourth consecutive first-round defeat at the Crucible. As a result, Maguire was guaranteed to be outside of the world's top 16 at the end of the tournament. After his 10–7 victory over David Gilbert, Ronnie O'Sullivan refused to attend a post-match meeting with the press or talk to tournament broadcasters, and received a formal warning from World Snooker. Following losses by Ebdon and Dott, Robertson became the fifth former champion to exit in the first round when Michael Holt defeated him 10–6. This meant that O'Sullivan, Selby, Williams, and Higgins were the only former winners to reach the second round. ### Second round The second round was played between 21 and 25 April as best-of-25-frames, over three sessions. McManus won 13–11 over Carter, who had defeated him 10–5 in the first round in 2015. Ding Junhui won 13–10 over Judd Trump, who had defeated him 13–4 in the previous year's quarter-finals. Carter was strongly critical of the table on which he played McManus, calling it "the worst I have ever played on." Tournament organisers later changed the cloth and cushions used on the tables. Kyren Wilson led at both 7–0 and then 11–5 over Allen before Allen won four straight frames to trail 11–9, but Wilson won the next two to win the match 13–9 and advance to his first World Championship quarter-final. Mark Selby led Sam Baird 11–7 before Baird won four consecutive frames to level at 11–11. Selby then won the next two frames to win 13–11. Four-time champion John Higgins beat Ricky Walden 13–8, and two-time champion Mark Williams defeated Michael Holt, also 13–8, to get past the second round for only the second time since 2006. Marco Fu defeated Anthony McGill 13–9 to reach his first quarter-final in a decade. Trailing Barry Hawkins 9–12, Ronnie O'Sullivan won three consecutive frames to take the match to a deciding frame. Hawkins prevailed in the decider to win the match 13–12, the first time in 14 years that he had beaten O'Sullivan in a competitive match. This was also only the second time in 13 years that O'Sullivan had failed to reach the quarter-finals. Despite losing, O'Sullivan made four century breaks and eight more breaks over 50, scoring 1,409 points to Hawkins's 1,135. ### Quarter-finals The quarter-finals were played between 26 and 27 April as best-of-25-frames, over three sessions. Ding's 13–3 victory over Mark Williams saw him win the match with a session to spare to reach his second Crucible semi-final, after his first appearance in 2011. After going 6–0 ahead, Mark Selby defeated Kyren Wilson 13–8. Wilson made a 143 break in the 20th frame, the highest of the tournament. Alan McManus came from 9–11 behind against John Higgins to win 13–11 and reach his first Crucible semi-final since 1993. At the age of 45, he became the oldest Crucible semi-finalist since Ray Reardon, who was 52 when he reached that stage in 1985. Marco Fu led Hawkins by 9–1 before Hawkins won five straight frames. Fu won 13–11 to reach his second Crucible semi-final, a decade after his first in 2006. ### Semi-finals The semi-finals were played from 28 to 30 April over four sessions as best-of-33-frame matches. In the first, Ding was leading McManus 5–0 and 9–3, scoring five centuries in nine frames. McManus won six consecutive frames to trail 8–9. Ding increased his lead to 12–8, and won 17–11 to reach his first World Championship final. In frame 20, Ding attempted a maximum break, but missed the 15th black for a break of 113, his sixth century. In the 27th frame, Ding made his seventh century to set a new record for the most centuries made by a player in a World Championship match. The record surpassed the previous record of six centuries set by Davis in 1946, Mark Selby in 2011, and Ronnie O'Sullivan in 2013. Ding's seven centuries equalled the record for the most by one player in any professional snooker match, set by Hendry in the 1994 UK Championship final. In total, 10 centuries were made in the match, which was a record in professional play. In the opening session of the other semi-final, Mark Selby took a 3–0 and 5–3 lead, before Marco Fu ended the second session all-square at 8–8. Fu's cue tip separated from his cue in the 15th frame as he was chalking it. A ten-minute break was called while the tip was glued back on. Frame 24, won by Selby to level at 12–12, lasted 76 minutes 11 seconds. This was the longest frame ever played at the Crucible, breaking the previous record of 74 minutes 58 seconds set in the 2009 match between Maguire and Mark King. The match was later tied at 15–15 until Selby won the final two frames to win the match 17–15. Frame 32 also lasted more than an hour. ### Final The final was played 1–2 May, held as best-of-35-frames, over four sessions. Ding was the first qualifier to play the World final since Trump was beaten by John Higgins in 2011. Ding also became the first Asian finalist in the championships. In the first session of the final, Mark Selby took a 6–0 lead, before Ding won the last two frames of the session to leave Selby 6–2 ahead. Ding won five of the next seven frames to trail by only one frame at 7–8, but Selby won the final two frames of the day for a 10–7 overnight lead. Some frames in the second session were lengthy, and play did not end at the Crucible until 00:24 local time on Monday morning. On the second day of the final, Ding again fought back to trailing by only one frame at 10–11; Selby won three of the session's last four frames to go into the final session 14–11 ahead. Selby won the next two frames to need only two more frames for victory. Ding won three more frames in the evening session – coming from 16 to 11 behind to 16–14. Selby clinched the match by 18 frames to 14 to claim his second world title, along with the £330,000 prize. The match ended just minutes after Selby's home city of Leicester celebrated Leicester City F.C.'s first ever Premier League title win. The afternoon session of the final was watched by 45 million people in China, the country's largest audience for a sporting event that year. The event as a whole attracted 300 million viewers in China, including 210 million on CCTV-5. ## Main draw Shown below are the results for each round. The numbers in parentheses beside some of the players are their seeding. Players in bold denote match winners. ## Qualifying A total of 128 players competed in the qualifying draw. There were three qualifying rounds, reducing the qualifiers to 16, who would go on to play in the final stages. Qualifying took place between 6 and 13 April 2016 at Ponds Forge International Sports Centre. All matches were the best-of-19-frames. The draw for the final stages was made on 14 April. The players competing in the qualifying included the tour players ranked outside the top 16, players featured as top-ups from the Q School and invited players from the WPBSA. The 16 invited qualifiers were made up of seven players who won or were runner-up in the following events together with 9 players invited based on the European Billiards & Snooker Association (EBSA) Order of Merit. Players invited by the Order of Merit were limited to one player per country. The seven winners/runners-up were: - Ng On-yee – WLBSA World Snooker Championship winner - Zhao Xintong – IBSF World Snooker Championship runner-up - Jamie Clarke – IBSF World Under-21 Snooker Championship runner-up - Cheung Ka Wai – IBSF World Under-18 Snooker Championship winner - Josh Boileau – EBSA European Under-21 Snooker Championships winner - Brandon Sargeant – EBSA European Under-21 Snooker Championships runner-up - Tyler Rees – EBSA European Under-18 Snooker Championships winner The remaining nine invitees were: ### Round 1 Players in bold denote match winners. ### Round 2 Players in bold denote match winners. ### Round 3 Winning players qualified for the main tournament. Players in bold denote match winners. ## Century breaks ### Televised stage centuries There were 86 century breaks made by 24 players in the televised stage of the World Championship, equalling the record set the year before. For every century break made during the 17-day championship in Sheffield, the title sponsor, Betfred, donated £200 to the Bluebell Wood Children's Hospice. The donation was rounded up to £25,000 as the goal of 70 centuries was achieved. Junhui made 15 centuries, one short of the record of 16 set by Hendry in 2002. - 143, 130, 129, 103 – Kyren Wilson - 141, 102 – Barry Hawkins - 140, 115, 109 – Michael Holt - 139, 124, 118, 103, 101 – Ronnie O'Sullivan - 138, 136, 135, 114, 111, 108, 102, 100, 100 – Marco Fu - 138, 132, 131, 128, 123, 113, 112, 110, 109, 103, 103, 103, 100, 100, 100 – Ding Junhui - 136, 128, 125, 119, 114, 107 – Alan McManus - 134, 133, 132, 126, 125, 120, 115, 101, 101 – Mark Selby - 125 – David Gilbert - 122, 104, 103, 103 – Mark Allen - 121, 107, 105, 105, 101, 100 – John Higgins - 119, 117 – Anthony McGill - 117, 107 – Liang Wenbo - 113 – Stuart Bingham - 111 – Martin Gould - 109, 105 – Shaun Murphy - 108, 103, 100 – Sam Baird - 107, 101 – Neil Robertson - 106, 106 – Judd Trump - 104 – Robbie Williams - 103, 102, 100 – Ali Carter - 102 – Mark Williams - 102 – Michael White - 102 – Ricky Walden ### Qualifying stage centuries There were 132 century breaks made by 63 players in the qualifying stage of the World Championship. - 144, 140, 102 – Thepchaiya Un-Nooh - 142 – Peter Lines - 140, 137, 106 – Ding Junhui - 140, 137, 104 – Zhou Yuelong - 139, 120, 117, 104 – Liam Highfield - 139, 104 – Oliver Lines - 138, 130, 111, 111, 101 – Ali Carter - 138, 110 – Hossein Vafaei - 138, 108, 104, 101 – Liang Wenbo - 136, 131, 119, 104 – Ryan Day - 136, 122, 118, 115, 106 – Jimmy Robertson - 135 – Andrew Higginson - 134, 121, 114 – Dechawat Poomjaeng - 134, 118, 117, 106, 104 – Noppon Saengkham - 134, 110, 102 – Kurt Maflin - 134, 101 – Lü Chenwei - 133, 119, 115, 114 – David Gilbert - 133, 100 – Xiao Guodong - 131, 116 – Kyren Wilson - 131 – Ben Woollaston - 130, 108 – Mark King - 130 – Mark Davis - 128 – Lee Walker - 127, 105, 100 – Mitchell Mann - 127 – Daniel Wells - 125 – Jamie Jones - 123 – Zhang Yong - 123 – Zhao Xintong - 122, 104 – Scott Donaldson - 121, 103 – Graeme Dott - 121, 100 – Kishan Hirani - 120, 108 – Li Hang - 120, 107, 103, 102 – Jack Lisowski - 116, 104, 104, 100 – Anthony Hamilton - 115, 105, 100 – Stuart Carrington - 114, 110 – Matthew Stevens - 113, 111 – Zhang Anda - 112, 109 – Alfie Burden - 112, 106, 103, 100 – Robert Milkins - 111 – James Wattana - 110, 107 – David Morris - 110 – Ian Glover - 109, 106 – Ken Doherty - 109, 102, 101 – Anthony McGill - 108, 100, 100 – Sam Baird - 108 – Chris Melling - 108 – Matthew Selt - 108 – Rory McLeod - 107 – Chris Wakelin - 107 – Fergal O'Brien - 107 – Thor Chuan Leong - 106, 105 – Robbie Williams - 106 – Mark Joyce - 106 – Michael Georgiou - 105, 104, 103 – Tom Ford - 105 – Sunny Akani - 105 – Allan Taylor - 105 – Joe Swail - 105 – Peter Ebdon - 104 – Gary Wilson - 102 – Eden Sharav - 102 – Luca Brecel - 101 – Gareth Allen

Solomon P. Sharp

American politician

Solomon Porcius Sharp (August 22, 1787 – November 7, 1825) was an American lawyer and politician, serving as attorney general of Kentucky and a member of the United States Congress and the Kentucky General Assembly. His murder by Jereboam O. Beauchamp in 1825 is referred to as the Beauchamp–Sharp Tragedy or "The Kentucky Tragedy." Sharp began his political career representing Warren County in the Kentucky House of Representatives. He briefly served in the War of 1812, then returned to Kentucky and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1813. He was re-elected to a second term, though his support of a controversial bill regarding legislator salaries cost him his seat in 1816. Allied with Kentucky's Debt Relief Party, he returned to the Kentucky House in 1817; in 1821, he accepted Governor John Adair's appointment to the post of Attorney General of Kentucky. Adair's successor, Joseph Desha, re-appointed him to this position. In 1825, Sharp resigned as attorney general to return to the Kentucky House. In 1820, rumors surfaced that Sharp had fathered a stillborn illegitimate child with Anna Cooke, a planter's daughter. Sharp denied the charge and the immediate political effects were minimal. When the charges were repeated during Sharp's 1825 General Assembly campaign, opponents publicized the allegation that the child was a mulatto. Whether Sharp made such a claim, or whether it was a rumor started by his political enemies, remains in doubt. Jereboam Beauchamp, who had married Cooke in 1824, avenged the honor of his wife by fatally stabbing Sharp at his home early on the morning of November 7, 1825. Sharp's murder inspired fictional works, most notably Edgar Allan Poe's unfinished play Politian and Robert Penn Warren's novel World Enough and Time (1950). ## Personal life Solomon Sharp was born on August 22, 1787, at Abingdon, Washington County, Virginia. He was the fifth child and third son of Captain Thomas and Jean (Maxwell) Sharp, a Scottish woman. Through the male line he was a great-great-grandson of John Sharp, Archbishop of York. His father Thomas Sharp was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, participating in the Battle of King's Mountain. The family briefly moved to the area near Nashville, Tennessee, and to North Carolina before settling permanently about 1795 at Russellville, Logan County where they lived in a log cabin near the Muddy River. Sharp "[intermittently attended] one of Logan County's academies" during his childhood years; the schools of Logan County were primitive at the time. He read the law and was admitted to the bar in 1806. He opened a practice in Russellville, but soon relocated to the busier Warren County seat of Bowling Green, which had 154 residents in 1810. He engaged in land speculation, sometimes in partnership with his brother, Dr. Leander Sharp, and by 1824, had acquired 11,000 acres, mostly north of the Barren River in Warren County. ## Marriage and family After becoming established, on December 17, 1818, Sharp at the age of 31 married Eliza T. Scott, the daughter of a physician who had served as an officer in the War of 1812. She was from Frankfort and above him in social standing. They had three children together. He moved the family to the state capital of Frankfort in 1820 for his political career. ## Political career In 1809, Sharp was elected to represent Warren County in the Kentucky House of Representatives. During his tenure, he supported the legislature's election of Henry Clay to the U.S. Senate, the creation of a state lottery, and the creation of an academy in Barren County. He served on a number of committees, and for a time served as interim speaker of the house during the General Assembly's second session. He was re-elected in 1810 and 1811. During the 1811 session, Sharp worked with Ben Hardin to secure passage of a bill to ensure that state officers and attorneys at law would not be involved in dueling. He also opposed a measure allowing harsher treatment of slaves. Sharp's political service was interrupted by the War of 1812. On September 18, 1812, he enlisted as a private in the Kentucky militia, serving under Lieutenant Colonel Young Ewing. Twelve days later, in a rapid rise even for the militia, he was promoted to major and made a part of Ewing's staff. Ewing's unit was put under the command of general Samuel Hopkins during his ineffective expedition against the Shawnee. In total, the expedition lasted forty-two days and never engaged the enemy. Sharp recognized the value of a record of military service in Kentucky politics, however; he was eventually promoted to the rank of colonel. ### U.S. Representative In 1812, Sharp was elected to the Thirteenth Congress as a member of the United States House of Representatives and took his seat at the age of 25, the minimum for election. Aligning with the War Hawks, he defended President James Madison's decision to lead the country into the war, and supported a proposal to offer 100 acres (0.156 sq mi; 0.405 km²) of land to any British deserters. Sharp also "[passionately denounced] Federalist obstruction of the war effort". In a speech on April 8, 1813, he opposed indemnity for those defrauded in the Yazoo land scandal in Mississippi. He allied with South Carolina's John C. Calhoun in supporting the Second Bank of the United States. Sharp was re-elected to the Fourteenth Congress, during which he served as chairman of the Committee on Private Land Claims. He supported the controversial Compensation Act of 1816 sponsored by fellow Kentuckian Richard Mentor Johnson. The measure, which paid Congressmen a flat salary instead of paying them on a daily basis for the days when they were in session, was unpopular with the voters of his district. When the next congressional session opened in December 1816, Sharp reversed his position and voted to repeal the law, but the damage was already done; he lost his seat in the House in the next election. In 1817, Sharp was again elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives. During his term, he supported measures for internal improvements, but opposed the creation of a state health board and a proposal to open the state's vacant lands to the widows and orphans of soldiers killed in the War of 1812. Most notably, he supported the creation of 46 new banks in the state, and proposed a tax on the branches of the Bank of the United States in Lexington and Louisville. ### Accusations of illegitimate child In May or June 1820, Anna Cooke, an unmarried planter's daughter in her early 30s, claimed that Sharp was the father of her illegitimate child; Sharp denied her claim. The stillborn child was rumored to have dark skin, and some speculated that it was a mulatto, with a black father. After her father's death and the sale of their plantation in Fairfax County, Virginia, Cooke had moved with her mother and siblings to Warren County between 1805 and 1810, when she may have met Sharp. In addition to losing the child, Cooke suffered the deaths of three of her five brothers between 1818 and 1821. The scandal soon abated for Sharp, as Anna had a reputation as "a freethinker, reader of romantic fiction, and a libertine". Although Sharp's political opponents would continue to call attention to his putative child in future campaigns, his reputation remained largely untarnished. ### Attorney general of Kentucky In 1821, Sharp began a campaign for a seat in the Kentucky Senate. His opponent, attorney John U. Waring, was a notably violent and contentious man, frequently in court because of altercations. (In 1835, he shot and killed the attorney Samuel Q. Richardson). Waring sent two threatening letters to Sharp, and on June 18, 1821, published a handbill attacking Sharp's character. Five days later, Sharp ceased campaigning for the senatorial seat. He accepted an appointment by Governor John Adair to the position of attorney general of Kentucky. Sharp's nomination was unanimously confirmed by the legislature on October 30, 1821. Sharp took office at a critical time Kentucky's history. Still reeling from the financial Panic of 1819, state politicians had split into two camps: those who supported legislation favorable to debtors (the Debt Relief Party) and those who favored the protection of creditors (typically called Anti-Reliefers.) Sharp had identified with the Relief Party, as had Governor Adair. In the 1824 presidential election, Sharp alienated some of his constituency by supporting his former House colleague John C. Calhoun instead of Kentucky's favorite son, Henry Clay. When it was clear that Calhoun's bid would fail, Sharp threw his support behind Andrew Jackson. He served as secretary of a meeting of Jackson supporters in Frankfort on October 2, 1824. After Governor Adair's term expired in 1825, he was succeeded by another Relief Party member, General Joseph Desha. Desha and Sharp had been colleagues in Congress, and Desha re-appointed Sharp as attorney general. The Relief faction in the legislature passed several measures favorable to debtors, but the Kentucky Court of Appeals struck them down as unconstitutional. Unable to muster the votes to remove the hostile justices on the Court of Appeals, Relief partisans in the General Assembly passed legislation to abolish the entire court and create a new one, which Governor Desha promptly stocked with sympathetic judges. For a time, two courts claimed authority as Kentucky's court of last resort; this period was referred to as the Old Court-New Court controversy. Sharp's role in the Relief Party's plan to abolish the old court and replace it with a new, more favorable court is not known. As he was the administration's chief legal counsel, historians believe he was closely involved. He is known to have issued the order for Old Court clerk Achilles Sneed to turn over his records to New Court clerk Francis P. Blair. By practicing as state attorney general before the New Court to the exclusion of the Old Court, Sharp provided it a measure of legitimacy. ### State House of Representatives On May 11, 1825, Sharp was chosen to represent the Desha administration in welcoming the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution, to Kentucky. At a banquet in Lafayette's honor three days later, Sharp toasted the guest of honor: "The People: Liberty will always be safe in their holy keeping." Shortly following this event, Sharp resigned as attorney general, likely because Relief Party advocates thought he would be more useful as a member of the General Assembly. The Anti-Relief partisans nominated former Senator John J. Crittenden for one of the two seats apportioned to Franklin County in the state House. The Relief Party countered with Sharp and Lewis Sanders, a prominent area lawyer. During the sharply contested campaign, both John U. Waring and Patrick Henry Darby, a land speculator, said that Sharp's life was at risk if he won. Opponents revived the charges of Sharp's illegitimate child. It was also alleged that Sharp had claimed that the child was mulatto and said he had a certificate from Cooke's midwife to that effect; whether Sharp made this claim may never be known for certain. Despite the controversy, Sharp netted the most votes in the election, winning by 69 out of a total of 1600 votes cast in the county. ## Murder and aftermath In the early hours of November 7, 1825, the day the General Assembly was to open its session, a man knocked on the door of Sharp's residence. When Sharp answered the door, the visitor grabbed him with his left hand and used his right to stab him in the heart with a poisoned dagger. Sharp died at approximately two o'clock in the morning. After lying in state in the House of Representatives Hall, he was buried in Frankfort Cemetery. Because of the bitterness of the campaign and the timing of the murder, speculation mounted that Sharp had been killed by an Anti-Relief partisan. For some time, rumors traveled that Darby was implicated in his death. Sharp's political rival, John J. Crittenden, tried to blunt such accusations by personally introducing a resolution condemning the murder and offering a $3000 reward for the capture of the assassin. The trustees of the city of Frankfort added a reward of $1000, and an additional $2000 reward was raised from private sources. In the 1825 session of the General Assembly, a measure to form Sharp County from Muhlenberg County died on the floor due to the tumultuous politics of the session. In the investigation that followed, the evidence quickly pointed to Jereboam O. Beauchamp, 23, who had married the much older Anna Cooke in 1824. On November 11, 1825, a four-man posse arrested Beauchamp at his home in Franklin. He was tried and convicted of Sharp's murder on May 19, 1826. His sentence – execution by hanging – was to be carried out on June 16, 1826. Beauchamp requested a stay of execution so that he could write a justification of his actions; he continued to assert his avenging his wife's honor. The request was granted, allowing Beauchamp to complete his book, The Confession of Jereboam O. Beauchamp: who was hanged at Frankfort, Ky., on the 7th day of July, 1826, for the murder of Col. Solomon P. Sharp. After two suicide attempts with his wife, who died as a result of the second incident, Beauchamp was hanged for his crime on July 7, 1826. Beauchamp's Confession was published in 1826. Some editions included The Letters of Ann Cook as an appendix. Historians dispute whether Cooke was their author. The following year, Sharp's brother, Dr. Leander Sharp, wrote Vindication of the Character of the Late Col. Solomon P. Sharp to defend him from the charges contained in Beauchamp's confession. In Vindication, Dr. Sharp portrayed the killing as a political assassination: he named Patrick Darby, a partisan of the Anti-Relief faction, as co-conspirator with Beauchamp, an Anti-Relief stalwart. Darby threatened to sue Sharp if he published his Vindication; and Waring threatened to kill him. Heeding these threats, Sharp did not publish his work; all extant manuscripts remained in his house, where they were discovered many years later during a remodeling. ## In popular culture The events have inspired numerous works of fiction, drama and history: - Charles Fenno Hoffman's novel, Greyslayer - William Gilmore Simms's novel, Beauchamp - Edgar Allan Poe's unfinished play, Politian - J.G. Dana and R.S. Thomas's history, Beauchamp's Trial. - L.F. Johnson included it in his Tragedies and Trials. - 1950, J. Winston Coleman published a history of the events. - 1950, Robert Penn Warren wrote a novel that was a "critique of romantic values" in World Enough and Time. - Richard Taylor's play, Three Kentucky Tragedies, was based on this. - 1992 John Hawkins created an outdoor drama on this subject, Wounded is the Wounding Heart, produced in Frankfort, Kentucky. ## See also - List of assassinated American politicians

Ambrose Rookwood

17th century English conspirator

Ambrose Rookwood (c. 1578 – 31 January 1606) was a member of the failed 1605 Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to replace the Protestant King James I with a Catholic sovereign. Rookwood was born into a wealthy family of Catholic recusants, and educated by Jesuits in Flanders. His older brother became a Franciscan, and his two younger brothers were ordained as Catholic priests. Rookwood became a horse-breeder. He married the Catholic Elizabeth Tyrwhitt, and had at least two sons. He was enlisted into the plot in September 1605 by Robert Catesby, a religious zealot whose impatience with James' treatment of English Catholics had grown so severe that he conspired to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder, killing the king and much of the Protestant hierarchy. With the other conspirators he had recruited, Catesby also planned to incite a rebellion in the Midlands, during which James's nine-year-old daughter Princess Elizabeth would be captured, and installed as titular queen. Rookwood's stable of fine horses was essential for the uprising to succeed. The explosion was planned to coincide with the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, but the man left in charge of the gunpowder stored beneath the House of Lords, Guy Fawkes, was discovered there and arrested. Rookwood fled the city, and informed Catesby and the others of the plan's failure. Together the remaining conspirators rode to Holbeche House in Staffordshire, where on 8 November they were attacked by the pursuing Sheriff of Worcester and his men. Catesby was killed, but Rookwood survived, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Rookwood and the survivors were arraigned on 27 January 1606 in Westminster Hall. Pleading not guilty, he claimed to have loved Catesby "above any worldly man". He was convicted; his request for mercy was ignored, and he was hanged, drawn and quartered on 31 January, in the Old Palace Yard at Westminster. ## Early life Born sometime about 1578, Ambrose Rookwood was the second of four sons born to Robert Rookwood and his second wife, Dorothy Drury, the daughter of Sir William Drury and Elizabeth Sothill. During his first marriage to Bridget Kemp, Robert had sired four sons, but all predeceased their father. The Rookwood family had lived at Stanningfield in Suffolk for 300 years. Wealthy, and staunch Catholics, the authorities viewed them as trouble-makers. Ambrose's Papist cousin Edward had spent ten years in prison for his faith, but in 1578 he entertained Queen Elizabeth I at his home, Euston Hall. It was an expensive visit that made a serious dent in the family's finances, and which neutered their influence for years thereafter. Ambrose's parents had been imprisoned for their recusancy, and he was indicted on the same charge in February 1605. He was apparently happy to advertise his faith; in the summer of 1605 he commissioned a London cutler, John Craddock, to place a Spanish blade into a sword hilt engraved with the story of the Passion of Christ. As such weapons were generally worn in public, it was "a potentially dangerous statement of faith". Ambrose and two of his brothers, Robert and Christopher, were educated by Jesuits at Saint-Omer, then in Flanders. Both brothers became priests (Ambrose's elder brother, Henry, became a Franciscan), and his half-sisters Dorothea and Susanna became nuns. According to the Jesuit Oswald Tesimond, Rookwood was "well-built and handsome, if somewhat short", which he compensated for by his taste in extravagant clothing. In author Antonia Fraser's opinion, this affectation was somewhat inappropriate at a time when "clothes were supposed to denote rank rather than money". ## Marriage, inheritance, and first treason In or shortly before 1599 he married Elizabeth, daughter of William Tyrwhitt, of Kettleby in Lincolnshire, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Peter Frescheville, of Staveley in Derbyshire. The Tyrwhitts were another prominent Roman Catholic family and his wife was possibly a first cousin to his future fellow conspirator Robert Keyes. The couple had two sons, Robert and Henry. On his father's death in 1600, he inherited Coldham Hall, which subsequently became a refuge for priests. The following year he joined the Earl of Essex's abortive rebellion against the government, for which he was captured and held at Newgate Prison. ## Enlisted In August 1605 Rookwood joined the Jesuits Henry Garnet and John Gerard on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Winefride's Well in Holywell. Late in September, he was approached by Robert Catesby, Thomas Wintour and John Wright, and invited to join what became known as the Gunpowder Plot. English Catholics had hoped that the persecution of their faith would end when James I came to the throne, as his attitude appeared to be moderate, even tolerant towards Catholics. In Catesby's view, James had reneged on his promises. He therefore planned to kill the king by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder, and then inciting a popular revolt to install James's daughter, Elizabeth, as titular queen. To this end he had already helped enlist nine Catholics into the conspiracy, but was running out of money and needed to recruit more men. Rookwood was a horse-breeder, and his stable of fine mounts at Coldham Hall was needed for the Midlands uprising. He had been asked to supply them with gunpowder about a year earlier, under the pretence that it was for William Stanley's regiment in Flanders—no longer an illegal operation due to the recent Treaty of London—but otherwise provided no funds for the conspiracy. Although unverifiable, his wife's relationship to Robert Keyes may mean that Rookwood already suspected that something was being planned. He was at first concerned for the welfare of the Catholic lords who would be present at the explosion, but his compunction was alleviated when Catesby promised him that they would be tricked out of attending Parliament that day. Any lingering doubts Rookwood had were removed by Catesby's lie that the Jesuits had given the scheme their approval. Rookwood had stayed with the Wintours at Huddington Court, and that month with the Catholic Lacons at Kinlet Hall, but at Cateby's behest he rented Clopton House near Stratford upon Avon, and moved there after Michaelmas. He took with him several Catholic religious symbols, such as chalices, crucifixes, vestments, Latin books and praying beads. These were concealed in a cellar built by the Jesuit Nicholas Owen. Toward the end of October he joined Keyes at his lodgings in London. A few days before the planned explosion he changed his mind about the sword he had ordered John Craddock to make, and had the cutler replace the grip with a gold one. The modified sword, which in total probably cost Rookwood more than £20, was delivered on 4 November. ## Discovery The existence of the plot had been revealed in an anonymous letter delivered ten days earlier to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, warning him to keep away from Parliament. On the evening of 4 November the authorities made a search of the House of Lords, where they discovered one of the plotters, Guy Fawkes, guarding a hoard of explosives. He was immediately arrested. Fawkes had posed as a servant of fellow plotter Thomas Percy, and it was therefore Percy's name that appeared on the first arrest warrant issued by the government. News of Fawkes's capture soon spread through London, prompting Christopher Wright (brother of John) to rush to Thomas Wintour, and tell what had happened. Wintour guessed that the government was looking for Percy, and told Wright to travel to Percy's lodgings and "bid him begone". While Wintour lingered, Christopher Wright and Percy left the city, followed by Keyes, and then Rookwood. A renowned horseman, Rookwood covered 30 miles in two hours on a single horse. Using various steeds he had left along the route, he passed Keyes at Highgate, and then Wright and Percy at Little Brickhill near Dunstable. He caught up with Catesby, who had left the previous day to prepare the uprising, and told him what had happened in London. The group, which now included Catesby, his servant Thomas Bates, both Wright brothers, Percy and Rookwood, rode on to Dunchurch. While Fawkes was being tortured, on 6 November the government began to round up anyone they thought might be involved. Rookwood's servants, still in the house their master had so hastily departed, were questioned on the same day. His belongings at Clopton—including several incriminating Catholic symbols—were also taken, and by the time the plotters had reached Catesby's family home at Ashby St Ledgers, Rookwood's name was among the list of suspects drawn up by the Lord Chief Justice. The fugitives continued on to Dunchurch, where they met the recently recruited conspirator Everard Digby, with his hunting party. The next day the group stole horses from Warwick Castle, although with his fine cortège, Rookwood avoided the town. They then collected stored weapons from Norbrook, and continued on to Huddington. The party tried in vain to expand their number, but were shunned; no one was prepared to risk being labelled a traitor. Father Garnet, contacted at Coughton Court by Bates, wrote Catesby a letter in which he implored the group to stop their "wicked actions", before himself fleeing. ## Fugitive > I doe acknowledge that uppon thursday morninge beeing the 7th of November 1605 my selfe and all the other gentlemen (as I doe remember) did confesse o' sinnes to one Mr. Hamonde Preeste, at Mr. Robert Wintour his house, and amonges other my sinnes I did acknowledge my error in concealing theire intended enterprise of pouder agaynste his Ma and the State, having a scruple in conscience, the facte seeminge to mee to bee too bluddye, hee for all in generall gave me absolution without any other circumnstances beeing hastned by the multitude that were to come to him. Rookwood was proclaimed a wanted man on 7 November. He went to confession and with the rest of the group took the sacrament—in Fraser's opinion, a sign that none of them thought they had long to live. Through pouring rain they rode to Hewell Grange, helping themselves to further arms, ammunition and money, and finally reached Holbeche House, on the border of Staffordshire, at about 10:00 pm that night. Tired from three days of riding, they spread in front of the fire some of the now-soaked gunpowder taken from Hewell Grange, to dry out. A stray spark landed on the powder, and Rookwood, Catesby, John Grant and another man were caught up in the resultant conflagration. Rookwood and Catesby were described as "reasonably well", but Grant was blinded. Several of the conspirators disappeared into the night, but Rookwood, Catesby, the Wright brothers, Percy and Grant stayed on. By 11:00 am the next day the house was surrounded by 200 of the Sheriff of Worcester's men. In the ensuing battle, Wintour was shot in the shoulder. John and Christopher Wright were killed. Catesby and Percy were reportedly both killed by a single musket ball. Rookwood was also shot, but survived and was quickly captured. His belongings should by right have been seized by the government, but his elaborate sword apparently proved to be too great a temptation for the Sheriff's men, and disappeared without trace. Rookwood and the others were taken first to Worcester, and then to the Tower of London. Those conspirators still at large were rounded up shortly after. ## Trial and execution Watched in secret by the king and his family, the surviving conspirators were arraigned in Westminster Hall on 27 January 1606. Some of the prisoners hung their heads "as if their hearts were full of doggedness", while others were nonchalant. All except Digby pleaded "Not Guilty". Defending himself, Rookwood claimed that he had been enlisted into the plot through his friendship with Catesby, "whom he loved above any worldly man". He admitted that he could not expect mercy, but asked for it anyway, so as not to leave a "blemish and blot unto all ages". His pleas were in vain. The jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to death. Three days later, Digby, Robert Wintour, John Grant and Thomas Bates were hanged, drawn and quartered at the western end of St Paul's churchyard. The following day, Rookwood, Thomas Wintour, Robert Keyes and Guy Fawkes were tied to wattled hurdles and dragged by horse from the Tower, to the Old Palace Yard at Westminster—a longer route than had been suffered by their fellow conspirators. Rookwood had asked to be informed when he passed by his lodgings in the Strand, so that he could open his eyes and see his wife, waiting at the window. He shouted "Pray for me, pray for me\!" According to Father Gerard (who was not then present), Elizabeth answered, "I will, and be of good courage. Offer theyself wholly to God. I, for my part, do as freely restore thee to God as He gave thee unto me." For the rest of the journey he kept his eyes closed, in prayer. Thomas Wintour was the first that day to be hanged and then killed. Rookwood was next, and made a short speech to the assembled audience. He was repentant, asking God to bless the king, queen, and their "royal progeny", but "spoil[ed] all the pottage with one filthy weed" by beseeching God to make the king a Catholic. He seems to have been left to hang for longer than the others, before suffering the remainder of his sentence.

Constantine (son of Basil I)

Byzantine emperor from 868 to 879

Constantine (; born between 855 and c. 865, died 3 September 879) was a junior Byzantine emperor, alongside Basil I as the senior emperor, from January 868 to 3 September 879. His parentage is a matter of debate, but historians generally assume him to be the son of Emperor Basil I (r. 867–886) and his first wife Maria or second wife Eudokia Ingerina; other theories include him being the son of Emperor Michael III (r. 842–867) and Eudokia. Constantine was made co-emperor by Basil in c. January 868. He was engaged to Ermengard of Italy, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Louis II, in 870/871, but it is not known if he married her; some sources suggest he did, and others argue that there is no concrete evidence. Constantine was the intended heir of Basil and as such received much attention from him and accompanied him on military campaigns, including one in Syria, for which he shared a triumph. In comparison, his younger brother, Leo VI (r. 886–912), was made co-emperor merely to secure the imperial lineage and bolster legitimacy. However, Constantine died of fever on 3 September 879, before his father. After his death, Leo became the primary heir, and another brother, Alexander (r. 912–913), was raised to co-emperor. ## Life ### Parentage According to Nicholas Adontz, Constantine was born c. 855, although the historian Shaun Tougher posits a birthdate of 864 or after. Constantine's parentage is heavily disputed, but Byzantine emperor Basil I (r. 867–886) was nominally his father. Basil had been born into a well-off peasant family, before gaining the notice of Emperor Michael III (r. 842–867), and subsequently became his confidant and Parakoimomenos (chief minister). Sources state that Basil had been married to Maria before he became emperor, and produced at least one child, Anastasia, and possibly Constantine himself, before being ordered by Michael III to divorce her and marry Eudokia Ingerina (r. 866–882), which he did. Eudokia is reported by some sources to have been the mistress of Michael III, and to have remained so even after marrying Basil. The exact date of the wedding is unknown, but the marriage of Basil to Eudokia has been traditionally dated to c. 865, based upon the timeline of the 10th-century Pseudo-Symeon; although historians such as Romilly Jenkins and Patricia Karlin-Hayter have questioned the validity of this timeline. Jenkins also points to the "chronological incongruities" of Symeon Logothete's narrative of Michael's reign, casting further doubt on the marriage date of Basil and Eudokia. Cyril Mango contends that Constantine was the child of Basil and Maria, along with Anastasia, a view shared by George Ostrogorsky. The British byzantinist Judith Herrin posits a different date for the marriage of Basil and Eudokia, which would make Eudokia the mother of Constantine. Leo Grammaticus, a 10th-century historian, suggests that Constantine was the son of Michael and Eudokia. The historians Lynda Garland and Shaun Tougher do not take a position in their 2007 work but admit that any of the three are possible. Some sources hostile to the Macedonian dynasty, which was founded by Basil, have suggested that other sons of Basil were not his own. These sources claim that Eudokia was Michael's mistress, and that the marriage between Basil and Eudokia was intended to be in name only. Accordingly, the parentage of both Leo VI (r. 886–912) and Stephen I of Constantinople, has been questioned, leaving Alexander (r. 912–913) as Basil's only legitimate son. Most modern scholars doubt the accuracy of such claims, considering Leo as the legitimate son of Basil and Eudokia. In his 1994 Ph.D. thesis, Tougher supports the theory that Constantine was the son of Eudokia. In his later 1997 work, he debates much of the reasoning behind considering Constantine to be Maria's son, and states that "there is no reason to believe that he was not a son of Eudokia", but does not definitively identify a mother for Constantine. In his 1994 work, he points out that many Byzantine chroniclers consider Constantine to be the son of Basil, and that many historians use an argument that Constantine was Maria's son as a way to explain why Leo, but not Constantine, was said to be hated by Basil, as Basil would therefore consider Constantine his true son. He also posits that Alexander, who could not possibly be Michael's son, by virtue of being born after his death, was not elevated in place of Constantine and Leo, suggesting that either Basil believed them both to be his own sons, or else was not bothered by them not being such, and that Michael does not seem to have viewed Leo in any paternal way. Tougher questions the arguments that preclude Constantine from being the son of Eudokia, by arguing that if he was born after the marriage of Eudokia and Basil, he would have been too young to campaign with his father in 878; he states that, given the issues related to the chronology of the marriage of Basil and Eudokia, it is possible that Constantine would be of fighting age. Arnold J. Toynbee puts forth the argument that parents may have different feelings for sons, and the difference of personality is as likely as different mothers to explain why Basil preferred Constantine to Leo. In his 1997 work, Tougher points out that Mango's reconstruction is ingenious, but convoluted, arguing that Michael could simply have adopted Constantine, rather than enacting a conspiracy to have his child, whom he could not have known would be male, born in the purple. This is reinforced by the fact that Alexander was only made emperor in 879, after Constantine's death. Tougher also points out that Leo VI advocated bringing the son of noblemen, called "noble whelps", on campaigns in his Tactica, the same term that the Life of Basil uses for Constantine in its narrative of the 878 campaign; Constantine may have been 13/14 at the time, and therefore it is possible he was the son of Eudokia. Adontz's contention that Constantine must have been born around 855, and therefore the son of Maria, is based on Contantine's engagement to Ermengard of Italy, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Louis II (r. 844–875); Tougher considers that this was more of a child's engagement than a true marriage and that, given that many Byzantine men were married at age 15, this may point to him being younger. Pro-Macedonian sources such as Leo VI and his son Constantine VII, as well as Joseph Genesius, exclude information regarding Basil's first marriage to Maria. Constantine VII states that all of his aunts and uncles were the legitimate children of Basil and Eudokia, and Leo goes further, stating that Basil and Eudokia produced children before being married to each other. Constantine VII gives an idealized version of Basil's reign, stating that when Basil was crowned at the Hagia Sophia, he was followed by a chariot containing Eudokia, Constantine, and Leo, and that both Constantine and Leo were crowned at the same time as Basil, in 867, with which no other source agrees. Anti-Macedonian sources, such as Symeon Logothete, usually assume that Constantine was the son of Eudokia, and provide information regarding the alleged infidelity of Eudokia, and the arrangement between Michael and Basil. ### Later life Basil rose to co-emperor by convincing Michael that his uncle Bardas was plotting against him and, after slaying Bardas with Michael's blessing, was crowned on 26 May 866. Tensions between Basil and Michael built up, and Basil feared that he would be replaced, as Michael had threatened to make the patrikios Basiliskianos emperor instead. Therefore, on the night of 23/24 September 867, Basil and his conspirators murdered Michael in his bed, making Basil the sole emperor. Constantine, along with the rest of his brothers, was educated by Photios, later the Patriarch of Constantinople; Photios may also have been Constantine's godfather although some sources, such as Tougher, believe Photios was the godfather of Leo, rather than Constantine. Constantine is thought by historians to have received more direct education and attention from Basil, whereas his other brothers may have been accompanied by court eunuchs. Constantine was made co-emperor by Basil in c. January 868, and was his intended heir. Some historians date the coronation to 6 January 868, the Feast of Epiphany, but there is no certainty of this; the ceremony could also have taken place on 25 December 867. Although Leo was raised to co-emperor on 6 January 870, Tougher views it likely that although Leo technically shared in imperial status, he was intended to live a life of obscurity, existing only to secure the imperial succession, much as Alexander would later under Leo himself. Constantine was engaged to Ermengard of Italy, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Louis II, in 870/871. The historians Charles Previté-Orton and Werner Ohnsorge take the position that they married, but Tougher (1994) argues that there is no evidence of this. Constantine served in military campaigns alongside his father, to prepare him to be a military leader, including a campaign in Syria, for which he shared a triumph in Constantinople with his father in 878. In January 879, Constantine and his father campaigned in the region of Germanicia, to great success. That summer, they returned and plundered Germanicia and Adata, and raided northern Mesopotamia. Constantine is mentioned as Emperor in The Acts of the Eighth Ecumenical Council. He also appears, bearing the title basileus, on several coins, alongside Basil and other members of his family. #### Death Constantine died unexpectedly of fever on 3 September 879, leaving Leo as the primary heir. Basil was severely affected by Constantine's death, and declared a period of mourning, possibly lasting up to six months, until 3 March 880. Much of the coinage made after Constantine's death focuses upon him. Jenkins says that after Constantine's death "Basil went out of mind, and continued during the next seven years to be subject to fits of derangement", and relates that Basil became violent and contemptuous toward Leo, whom he "had never cared for", despising his "bookish youth"; Tougher considers this "at best, an overstatement". Tougher does concede that pro-Macedonian sources have an obvious bias in declaring that Basil recovered "manfully, inspired by the example of Job", but believes Basil's shock was due more to the loss of an heir whom Basil had trained well, and expected to succeed him, rather than true favoritism. Basil also had Constantine declared a saint by Photios I, the Patriarch of Constantinople, confirmed by the Synaxarion of Constantinople. The Life of Ignatios states that Basil had numerous churches and monasteries built in honor of Constantine, including one at a location where Bishop Theodore Santabarenos was supposedly able to summon the ghost of Constantine for Basil. After Constantine's death, Basil focused on securing his dynasty by marrying Leo to Theophano Martinakia, so they could produce heirs, and Tougher (1994) remarks that Basil may have become overprotective, shielding his remaining children from warfare. Alexander is believed to have been crowned emperor following Constantine's death, in 879. Basil imprisoned Leo and stripped him of imperial rank in 883, allegedly for his plans to usurp him, whereafter Alexander appears to have become the heir, until July 886, when Leo was released and restored as emperor. Just a month later, on 29 August 886, Basil died of wounds from a hunting trip, and Leo succeeded him.

David I of Scotland

King of Alba from 1124 to 1153

David I or Dauíd mac Maíl Choluim (Modern Gaelic: Daibhidh I mac [Mhaoil] Chaluim; c. 1084 – 24 May 1153) was a 12th century ruler and saint who was Prince of the Cumbrians from 1113 to 1124 and later King of Scotland from 1124 to 1153. The youngest son of King Malcolm III and Queen Margaret, David spent most of his childhood in Scotland but was exiled to England temporarily in 1093. Perhaps after 1100, he became a dependent at the court of King Henry I of England, by whom he was influenced. When David's brother Alexander I died in 1124, David chose, with the backing of Henry I, to take the Kingdom of Alba (Scotland) for himself. He was forced to engage in warfare against his rival and nephew, Máel Coluim mac Alaxandair. Subduing the latter seems to have taken David ten years, a struggle that involved the destruction of Óengus, Mormaer of Moray. David's victory allowed expansion of control over more distant regions theoretically part of his Kingdom. After the death of his former patron Henry I, David supported the claims of Henry's daughter and his own niece, Empress Matilda, to the throne of England. In the process, he came into conflict with King Stephen and was able to expand his power in northern England, despite his defeat at the Battle of the Standard in 1138. David I is a saint of the Catholic Church, with his feast day celebrated on 24 May. The term "Davidian Revolution" is used by many scholars to summarise the changes that took place in Scotland during his reign. These included his foundation of burghs and regional markets, implementation of the ideals of Gregorian Reform, foundation of monasteries, Normanisation of the Scottish government, and the introduction of feudalism through immigrant Anglo-Norman, Norman and Flemish knights. ## Early years David was born on a date unknown in 1084 in Scotland. He was probably the eighth son of King Malcolm III, and certainly the sixth and youngest borne by Malcolm's second wife, Margaret of Wessex. He was the grandson of King Duncan I. In 1093, King Malcolm and David's brother Edward were killed at the River Aln during an invasion of Northumberland. David and his two brothers Alexander and Edgar were probably present when their mother died shortly afterwards. According to later medieval tradition, the three brothers were in Edinburgh when they were besieged by their paternal uncle Donald III, who made himself king. It is not certain what happened next, but an insertion in the Chronicle of Melrose states that Donald forced his three nephews into exile, although he was allied with another of his nephews, Edmund. John of Fordun wrote, centuries later, that an escort into England was arranged for them by their maternal uncle Edgar Ætheling. King William Rufus of England opposed Donald's accession to the northerly kingdom. He sent the eldest son of Malcolm, David's half-brother Duncan, into Scotland with an army. Duncan was killed within the year, and so in 1097 William sent Duncan's half-brother Edgar into Scotland. The latter was more successful and was crowned by the end of 1097. During the power struggle of 1093–1097, David was in England. In 1093, he may have been about nine years old. From 1093 until 1103, David's presence cannot be accounted for in detail, but he appears to have been in Scotland for the remainder of the 1090s. When William Rufus was killed, his brother Henry Beauclerc seized power and married David's sister, Matilda. The marriage made David the brother-in-law of the ruler of England. From that point onwards, David was probably an important figure at the English court. Despite his Gaelic background, by the end of his stay in England, David had become a fully Normanised prince. William of Malmesbury wrote that it was in this period that David "rubbed off all tarnish of Scottish barbarity through being polished by intercourse and friendship with us". ## Early rule 1113–1124 ### Prince of the Cumbrians David's brother King Edgar had visited William Rufus in May 1099 and bequeathed to David extensive territory to the south of the river Forth. On 8 January 1107, Edgar died. His younger brother Alexander took the throne. It has been assumed that David took control of his inheritance – the southern lands bequeathed by Edgar – soon after the latter's death. However, it cannot be shown that he possessed his inheritance until his foundation of Selkirk Abbey late in 1113. According to Richard Oram, it was only in 1113, when Henry returned to England from Normandy, that David was at last in a position to claim his inheritance in southern Scotland. King Henry's backing seems to have been enough to force King Alexander to recognise his younger brother's claims. This probably occurred without bloodshed but through the threat of force nonetheless. David's aggression seems to have inspired resentment amongst some native Scots. A Middle Gaelic quatrain from this period complains that: If "divided from" is anything to go by, this quatrain may have been written in David's new territories in southern Scotland. The lands in question consisted of the Shires of Scotland of Roxburghshire, Selkirkshire, Berwickshire, Peeblesshire and Lanarkshire. David, moreover, gained the title princeps Cumbrensis, "Prince of the Cumbrians", as attested in David's charters from this era. Although this was a large slice of Scotland south of the river Forth, the region of Galloway-proper was entirely outside David's control. David may perhaps have had varying degrees of overlordship in parts of Dumfriesshire, Ayrshire, Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire. In the lands between Galloway and the Principality of Cumbria, David eventually set up large-scale marcher lordships, such as Annandale for Robert de Brus, Cunningham for Hugh de Morville, and possibly Strathgryfe for Walter Fitzalan. ### Earl of Huntingdon In the later part of 1113, King Henry gave David the hand of Matilda of Huntingdon, daughter and heiress of Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria. The marriage brought with it the "Honour of Huntingdon", a lordship scattered through the shires of Northampton, Huntingdon, and Bedford. Within a few years, Matilda bore him two sons: Malcolm, who died young, and Henry, whom David named after his patron. The new territories which David controlled were a valuable supplement to his income and manpower, increasing his status as one of the most powerful magnates in the Kingdom of the English. Moreover, Matilda's father Waltheof had been Earl of Northumberland, a defunct lordship which had covered the far north of England and included Cumberland and Westmorland, Northumberland-proper, as well as overlordship of the bishopric of Durham. After King Henry's death, David revived the claim to this earldom for his son, Henry. David's activities and whereabouts after 1114 are not always easy to trace. He spent much of his time outside his principality, in England and Normandy. Despite the death of his sister on 1 May 1118, David still possessed the favour of King Henry when his brother Alexander died in 1124, leaving Scotland without a king. ## Political and military events in Scotland during David's kingship In spite of the fact that David spent his childhood in Scotland, Michael Lynch and Richard Oram portray him as having little initial connection with the culture and society of the Scots; but both likewise argue that David became increasingly re-Gaelicised in the later stages of his reign. Whatever the case, David's claim to be heir to the Scottish kingdom was doubtful. He was the youngest of eight sons of the fifth from last king. Two more recent kings had produced sons, William fitz Duncan, son of King Duncan II, and Máel Coluim, son of the last King Alexander, but since Scots had never adopted the rules of primogeniture that was not a barrier to his kingship, and unlike David, neither William nor Máel Coluim had the support of Henry. So when Alexander died in 1124, the aristocracy of Scotland could either accept David as king or face war with both David and Henry. ### Coronation and struggle for the kingdom Alexander's son, Máel Coluim, chose war. Orderic Vitalis reported that Máel Coluim mac Alaxandair "affected to snatch the kingdom from [David], and fought against him two sufficiently fierce battles; but David, who was loftier in understanding and in power and wealth, conquered him and his followers". Máel Coluim escaped unharmed into areas of Scotland not yet under David's control, and in those areas gained shelter and aid. In either April or May of the same year, David was crowned King of Scotland (; Medieval Latin: rex Scottorum) at Scone. If later Scottish and Irish evidence can be taken as evidence, the ceremony of coronation was a series of elaborate traditional rituals, of the kind infamous in the Anglo-French world of the 12th century for their "unchristian" elements. Aelred of Rievaulx, friend and one-time member of David's court, reported that David "so abhorred those acts of homage which are offered by the Scottish nation in the manner of their fathers upon the recent promotion of their kings, that he was with difficulty compelled by the bishops to receive them". Outside his Cumbrian principality and the southern fringe of Scotland-proper, David exercised little power in the 1120s, and in the words of Richard Oram, was "king of Scots in little more than name". He was probably in that part of Scotland he did rule for most of the time between late 1127 and 1130. However, he was at the court of Henry in 1126 and in early 1127, and returned to Henry's court in 1130, serving as a judge at Woodstock for the treason trial of Geoffrey de Clinton. It was in this year that David's wife, Matilda of Huntingdon, died. Possibly as a result of this, and while David was still in southern England, Scotland-proper rose up in arms against him. The instigator was, again, his nephew Máel Coluim, who now had the support of Óengus of Moray. King Óengus was David's most powerful vassal, a man who, as grandson of King Lulach of Scotland, even had his own claim to the kingdom. The rebel Scots had advanced into Angus, where they were met by David's Mercian constable, Edward; a battle took place at Stracathro near Brechin. According to the Annals of Ulster, 1000 of Edward's army, and 4000 of Óengus' army – including Óengus himself – died. According to Orderic Vitalis, Edward followed up the killing of Óengus by marching north into Moray itself, which, in Orderic's words, "lacked a defender and lord"; and so Edward, "with God's help obtained the entire duchy of that extensive district". However, this was far from the end of it. Máel Coluim escaped, and four years of continuing civil war followed; for David, this period was quite simply a "struggle for survival". It appears that David asked for and obtained extensive military aid from King Henry. Aelred of Rievaulx related that at this point a large fleet and a large army of Norman knights, including Walter Espec, were sent by Henry to Carlisle in order to assist David's attempt to root out his Scottish enemies. The fleet seems to have been used in the Irish Sea, the Firth of Clyde and the entire Argyll coast, where Máel Coluim was probably at large among supporters. In 1134, Máel Coluim was captured and imprisoned in Roxburgh Castle. Since modern historians no longer confuse him with "Malcolm MacHeth", it is clear that nothing more is ever heard of Máel Coluim mac Alaxandair, except perhaps that his sons were later allied with Somerled. ### Pacification of the west and north Richard Oram puts forward the suggestion that it was during this period that David granted Walter fitz Alan Strathgryfe, with northern Kyle and the area around Renfrew, forming what would become the "Stewart" lordship of Strathgryfe; he also suggests that Hugh de Morville may have gained Cunningham and the settlement of "Strathyrewen" (i.e. Irvine). This would indicate that the 1130–1134 campaign had resulted in the acquisition of these territories. How long it took to pacify Moray is not known, but in this period David appointed his nephew William fitz Duncan to succeed Óengus, perhaps in compensation for the exclusion from the succession to the Scottish throne caused by the coming of age of David's son Henry. William may have been given the daughter of Óengus in marriage, cementing his authority in the region. The burghs of Elgin and Forres may have been founded at this point, consolidating royal authority in Moray. David also founded Urquhart Priory, possibly as a "victory monastery", and assigned to it a percentage of his cain (tribute) from Argyll. During this period too, a marriage was arranged between the son of Matad, Mormaer of Atholl, and the daughter of Haakon Paulsson, Earl of Orkney. The marriage temporarily secured the northern frontier of the kingdom and held out the prospect that a son of one of David's mormaers could gain Orkney and Caithness for the Kingdom of Scotland. Thus, by the time Henry I died on 1 December 1135, David had more of Scotland under his control than ever before. ### Dominating the north While fighting King Stephen and attempting to dominate northern England in the years following 1136, David was continuing his drive for control of the far north of Scotland. In 1139, his cousin, the five-year-old Harald Maddadsson, was given the title of "Earl" and half the lands of the earldom of Orkney, in addition to Scottish Caithness. Throughout the 1140s, Caithness and Sutherland were brought back under the Scottish zone of control. Sometime before 1146, David appointed a native Scot called Aindréas to be the first Bishop of Caithness, a bishopric which was based at Halkirk, near Thurso, in an area which was ethnically Scandinavian. In 1150, it looked like Caithness and the whole earldom of Orkney were going to come under permanent Scottish control. However, David's plans for the north soon began to encounter problems. In 1151, King Eystein II of Norway put a spanner in the works by sailing through the waterways of Orkney with a large fleet and catching the young Harald unaware in his residence at Thurso. Eystein forced Harald to pay fealty as a condition of his release. Later in the year David hastily responded by supporting the claims to the Orkney earldom of Harald's rival Erlend Haraldsson, granting him half of Caithness in opposition to Harald. King Eystein responded in turn by making a similar grant to this same Erlend, cancelling the effect of David's grant. David's weakness in Orkney was that the Norwegian kings were not prepared to stand back and let him reduce their power. ## England David's relationship with England and the English crown in these years is usually interpreted in two ways. Firstly, his actions are understood in relation to his connections with the King of England. No historian is likely to deny that David's early career was largely manufactured by King Henry I of England. David was the latter's brother-in-law and "greatest protégé", one of Henry's "new men". His hostility to Stephen can be interpreted as an effort to uphold the intended inheritance of Henry I, the succession of his daughter and David's niece Empress Matilda. David carried out his wars in her name, joined her when she arrived in England, and later knighted her son Henry. However, David's policy towards England can be interpreted in an additional way. David was the independence-loving king trying to build a "Scoto-Northumbrian" realm by seizing the most northerly parts of the English kingdom. In this perspective, David's support for Matilda is used as a pretext for land-grabbing. David's maternal descent from the House of Wessex and his son Henry's maternal descent from the English earls of Northumberland is thought to have further encouraged such a project, a project which came to an end only after Henry II ordered David's child successor Máel Coluim IV to hand over the most important of David's gains. It is clear that neither one of these interpretations can be taken without some weight being given to the other. ### Usurpation of Stephen and First Treaty of Durham Henry I had arranged his inheritance to pass to his daughter Empress Matilda. Instead, Stephen, younger brother of Theobald II, Count of Blois, seized the throne. David had been the first layperson to take the oath to uphold the succession of Matilda in 1127, and when Stephen was crowned on 22 December 1135, David decided to make war. Before December was over, David marched into northern England, and by the end of January, he had occupied the castles of Carlisle, Wark, Alnwick, Norham and Newcastle. By February David was at Durham, but an army led by King Stephen met him there. Rather than fight a pitched battle, a treaty was agreed whereby David would retain Carlisle, while David's son Henry was re-granted the title and half the lands of the earldom of Huntingdon, territory which had been confiscated during David's revolt. On Stephen's side, he received back the other castles; and while David would do no homage, Stephen was to receive the homage of Henry for both Carlisle and the other English territories. Stephen also gave the rather worthless but for David face-saving promise that if he ever chose to resurrect the defunct earldom of Northumberland, Henry would be given first consideration. Importantly, the issue of Matilda was not mentioned. However, the first Durham treaty quickly broke down after David took insult at the treatment of his son Henry at Stephen's court. ### Renewal of war and Clitheroe When the winter of 1136–1137 was over, David prepared again to invade England. The king of the Scots massed an army on Northumberland's border, to which the English responded by gathering an army at Newcastle. Once more pitched battle was avoided, and instead, a truce was agreed until December. When December fell, David demanded that Stephen hand over the whole of the old earldom of Northumberland. Stephen's refusal led to David's third invasion, this time in January 1138. The army which invaded England in January and February 1138 shocked the English chroniclers. Richard of Hexham called it "an execrable army, savager than any race of heathen yielding honour to neither God nor man" and that it "harried the whole province and slaughtered everywhere folk of either sex, of every age and condition, destroying, pillaging and burning the vills, churches and houses". Several doubtful stories of cannibalism were recorded by chroniclers, and these same chroniclers paint a picture of routine enslavings, as well as killings of churchmen, women and infants. By February King Stephen marched north to deal with David. The two armies avoided each other, and Stephen was soon on the road south. In the summer David split his army into two forces, sending William fitz Duncan to march into Lancashire, where he harried Furness and Craven. On 10 June, William fitz Duncan met a force of knights and men-at-arms. A pitched battle took place, the battle of Clitheroe, and the English army was routed. ### Battle of the Standard and Second Treaty of Durham By later July 1138, the two Scottish armies had reunited in "St Cuthbert's land", that is, in the lands controlled by the Bishop of Durham, on the far side of the river Tyne. Another English army had mustered to meet the Scots, this time led by William, Earl of Aumale. The victory at Clitheroe was probably what inspired David to risk battle. David's force, apparently 26,000 strong and several times larger than the English army, met the English on 22 August at Cowdon Moor near Northallerton, North Yorkshire. The Battle of the Standard, as the encounter came to be called, was a defeat for the Scots. Afterwards, David and his surviving notables retired to Carlisle. Although the result was a defeat, it was not by any means decisive. David retained the bulk of his army and thus the power to go on the offensive again. The siege of Wark, for instance, which had been going on since January, continued until it was captured in November. David continued to occupy Cumberland as well as much of Northumberland. On 26 September Cardinal Alberic, Bishop of Ostia, arrived at Carlisle where David had called together his kingdom's nobles, abbots and bishops. Alberic was there to investigate the controversy over the issue of the Bishop of Glasgow's allegiance or non-allegiance to the Archbishop of York. Alberic played the role of peace broker, and David agreed to a six-week truce which excluded the siege of Wark. On 9 April, David and Stephen's wife Matilda of Boulogne (daughter of Mary of Scotland, and so another niece of David) met each other at Durham and agreed a settlement. David's son Henry was given the earldom of Northumberland and was restored to the earldom of Huntingdon and lordship of Doncaster; David himself was allowed to keep Carlisle and Cumberland. King Stephen was to retain possession of the strategically vital castles of Bamburgh and Newcastle. This effectively fulfilled all of David's war aims. ### Arrival of Matilda and the renewal of conflict The settlement with Stephen was not set to last long. The arrival in England of Empress Matilda gave David an opportunity to renew the conflict with Stephen. In either May or June, David travelled to the south of England and entered Matilda's company; he was present for her expected coronation at Westminster Abbey, though this never took place. David was there until September when the Empress found herself surrounded at Winchester. This civil war, or "the Anarchy" as it was later called, enabled David to strengthen his own position in northern England. While David consolidated his hold on his own and his son's newly acquired lands, he also sought to expand his influence. The castles at Newcastle and Bamburgh were again brought under his control, and he attained dominion over all of England north-west of the river Ribble and Pennines while holding the north-east as far south as the river Tyne, on the borders of the core territory of the bishopric of Durham. While his son brought all the senior barons of Northumberland into his entourage, David rebuilt the fortress of Carlisle. Carlisle quickly replaced Roxburgh as his favoured residence. David's acquisition of the mines at Alston on the South Tyne enabled him to begin minting the Kingdom of Scotland's first silver coinage. David, meanwhile, issued charters to Shrewsbury Abbey in respect to their lands in Lancashire. ### Bishopric of Durham and the Archbishopric of York However, David's successes were in many ways balanced by his failures. David's greatest disappointment during this time was his inability to ensure control of the Bishopric of Durham and the Archbishopric of York. David had attempted to appoint his chancellor, William Comyn, to the bishopric of Durham, which had been vacant since the death of Bishop Geoffrey Rufus in 1140. Between 1141 and 1143, Comyn was the de facto bishop, and had control of the bishop's castle; but he was resented by the chapter. Despite controlling the town of Durham, David's only hope of ensuring his election and consecration was gaining the support of the papal legate, Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester and brother of King Stephen. Despite obtaining the support of Empress Matilda, David was unsuccessful and had given up by the time William of St. Barbara was elected to the see in 1143. David also attempted to interfere in the succession to the archbishopric of York. William FitzHerbert, nephew of King Stephen, found his position undermined by the collapsing political fortune of Stephen in the north of England and was deposed by the Pope. David used his Cistercian connections to build a bond with Henry Murdac, the new archbishop. Despite the support of Pope Eugene III, supporters of King Stephen and William FitzHerbert managed to prevent Henry taking up his post at York. In 1149, Henry sought the support of David. David seized on the opportunity to bring the archdiocese under his control and marched on the city. However, Stephen's supporters became aware of David's intentions and informed King Stephen. Stephen therefore marched to the city and installed a new garrison. David decided not to risk such an engagement and withdrew. Richard Oram has conjectured that David's ultimate aim was to bring the whole of the ancient Kingdom of Northumbria into his dominion. For Oram, this event was the turning point, "the chance to radically redraw the political map of the British Isles [had been] lost forever". ## Scottish Church Historical treatment of David I and the Scottish church usually acknowledges David's role as the defender of the Scottish church's independence from claims of overlordship by the Archbishop of York and the Archbishop of Canterbury. ### Innovations in the church system It was once held that Scotland's episcopal sees and entire parochial system owed its origins to the innovations of David I. Today, scholars have moderated this view. Aelred of Rievaulx wrote in David's eulogy that when David came to power, "he found three or four bishops in the whole Scottish kingdom [north of the Forth], and the others wavering without a pastor to the loss of both morals and property; when he died, he left nine, both of ancient bishoprics which he himself restored and new ones which he erected". Although David moved the bishopric of Mortlach east to Old Aberdeen, and arranged the creation of the diocese of Caithness, no other bishoprics can be safely called David's creation. The bishopric of Glasgow was restored rather than resurrected. David appointed his reform-minded French chaplain John Capellanus to the bishopric and carried out an inquest, afterwards assigning to the bishopric all the lands of his principality, except those in the east which were already governed by the Bishop of St Andrews. David was at least partly responsible for forcing semi-monastic "bishoprics" like Brechin, Dunkeld, Mortlach (Aberdeen) and Dunblane to become fully episcopal and firmly integrated into a national diocesan system. As for the development of the parochial system, David's traditional role as its creator can not be sustained. Scotland already had an ancient system of parish churches dating to the Early Middle Ages, and the kind of system introduced by David's Normanising tendencies can more accurately be seen as mild refashioning, rather than creation; he made the Scottish system as a whole more like that of France and England, but he did not create it. ### Ecclesiastical disputes One of the first problems David had to deal with as king was an ecclesiastical dispute with the English Church. The problem with the English Church concerned the subordination of Scottish sees to the archbishops of York and/or Canterbury, an issue which since his election in 1124 had prevented Robert of Scone from being consecrated to the see of St Andrews (Cenn Ríghmonaidh). Since the 11th century, the bishopric of St Andrews likely functioned as a de facto archbishopric. The title of "Archbishop" is accorded in Scottish and Irish sources to Bishop Giric and Bishop Fothad II. The problem was that this archepiscopal status had not been cleared with the papacy, opening the way for English archbishops to claim the overlordship of the whole Scottish church. The man responsible was the new aggressively assertive Archbishop of York, Thurstan. His easiest target was the bishopric of Glasgow, which being south of the river Forth was not regarded as part of Scotland nor the jurisdiction of St Andrews. In 1125, Pope Honorius II wrote to John, Bishop of Glasgow ordering him to submit to the archbishopric of York. David ordered Bishop John of Glasgow to travel to the Apostolic See in order to secure a pallium which would elevate the bishopric of St Andrews to an archbishopric with jurisdiction over Glasgow. Thurstan travelled to Rome, as did the Archbishop of Canterbury, William de Corbeil, and both presumably opposed David's request. David however gained the support of King Henry, and the Archbishop of York agreed to a year's postponement of the issue and to consecrate Robert of Scone without making an issue of subordination. York's claim over bishops north of the Forth was in practice abandoned for the rest of David's reign, although York maintained her more credible claims over Glasgow. In 1151, David again requested a pallium for the Archbishop of St Andrews. Cardinal John Paparo met David at his residence in Carlisle in September 1151. Tantalisingly for David, the Cardinal was on his way to Ireland with four pallia to create four new Irish archbishoprics. When the Cardinal returned to Carlisle, David made the request. In David's plan, the new archdiocese would include all the bishoprics in David's Scottish territory, as well as bishopric of Orkney and the bishopric of the Isles. Unfortunately for David, the Cardinal does not appear to have brought the issue up with the papacy. In the following year, the papacy dealt David another blow by creating the archbishopric of Trondheim, a new Norwegian archbishopric embracing the bishoprics of the Isles and Orkney. ## Succession and death Perhaps the greatest blow to David's plans came on 12 July 1152 when Henry, Earl of Northumberland, David's heir, died. He had probably been suffering from some kind of illness for a long time. David had under a year to live, and he may have known that he was not going to be alive much longer. David quickly arranged for his grandson Malcolm IV to be made his successor, and for his younger grandson William to be made Earl of Northumberland. Donnchad I, Mormaer of Fife, the senior magnate in Scotland-proper, was appointed as rector, or regent, and took the 11-year-old Malcolm around Scotland-proper on a tour to meet and gain the homage of his future Gaelic subjects. David's health began to fail seriously in the spring of 1153, and on 24 May 1153, David died in Carlisle Castle. In his obituary in the Annals of Tigernach, he is called Dabíd mac Mail Colaim, rí Alban & Saxan, "David, son of Malcolm, King of Scotland and England", a title which acknowledged the importance of the new English part of David's realm. He was buried before the high altar Dunfermline Abbey in early June. ## Veneration David I is recognised as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, with a feast day of 24 May, though it appears that he was never formally canonized. There are churches in Scotland which have him as their patron. His mother Saint Margaret of Scotland was canonised in 1249. ## Historiography ### Medieval reputation The earliest English assessments of David portray him as a pious king, a reformer and a civilising agent in a barbarian nation. For William of Newburgh, David was a "King not barbarous of a barbarous nation", who "wisely tempered the fierceness of his barbarous nation". William praises David for his piety, noting that, among other saintly activities, "he was frequent in washing the feet of the poor" (this can be read literally: his mother, who is now patron saint of Scotland, was widely known and lauded for the same practice). Another of David's eulogists, his former courtier Aelred of Rievaulx, echoes Newburgh's assertions and praises David for his justice as well as his piety, commenting that David's rule of the Scots meant that "the whole barbarity of that nation was softened ... as if forgetting their natural fierceness they submitted their necks to the laws which the royal gentleness dictated". Although avoiding stress on 12th century Scottish "barbarity", the Lowland Scottish historians of the Late Middle Ages tend to repeat the accounts of earlier chronicle tradition. Much that was written was either directly transcribed from the earlier medieval chronicles themselves or was modelled closely upon them, even in the significant works of John of Fordun, Andrew Wyntoun and Walter Bower. For example, Bower includes in his text the eulogy written for David by Aelred of Rievaulx. This quotation extends to over twenty pages in the modern edition and exerted a great deal of influence over what became the traditional view of David in later works about Scottish history. Historical treatment of David developed in the writings of later Scottish historians, and the writings of men like John Mair, George Buchanan, Hector Boece, and Bishop John Leslie ensured that by the 18th century, a picture of David as a pious, justice-loving state-builder and vigorous maintainer of Scottish independence had emerged. Moreover, Bower stated in his eulogy that David always had the ambition to join a crusade, which was prevented eventually by his death. In addition, Aelred of Rievaulx hinted that David expressed his desire to be part of the Second Crusade himself, but he was dissuaded by his subjects. However, David had already met Hugues de Payens, the first Grand Master of the Knights Templar, in 1128 in Scotland. In the meantime, the Order established a seat at Balantrodoch, now Temple, Midlothian on the South Esk (River Esk, Lothian). ### Modern treatment In the modern period, there has been more of an emphasis on David's state-building and the effects of his changes on Scottish cultural development. Lowland Scots tended to trace the origins of their culture to the marriage of David's father Máel Coluim III to Saint Margaret of Scotland, a myth which had its origins in the medieval period. With the development of modern historical techniques in the mid-19th century, responsibility for these developments appeared to lie more with David than his father. David assumed a principal place in the alleged destruction of the Celtic Kingdom of Scotland, Andrew Lang, in 1900, wrote that "with Alexander [I], Celtic domination ends; with David, Norman and English dominance is established". The ages of Enlightenment and Romanticism had elevated the role of races and "ethnic packages" into mainstream history, and in this context David was portrayed as hostile to the native Scots, and his reforms were seen in the light of natural, perhaps even justified, civilised Teutonic aggression towards the backward Celts. In the 20th century, several studies were devoted to Normanisation in 12th century Scotland, focusing upon and thereby emphasising the changes brought about by the reign of David I. Græme Ritchie's The Normans in Scotland (1954), Archie Duncan's Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom (1974) and the many articles of G. W. S. Barrow all formed part of this historiographical trend. In the 1980s, Barrow sought a compromise between change and continuity, and argued that the reign of King David was, in fact, a "Balance of New and Old". Such a conclusion was a natural incorporation of an underlying current in Scottish historiography which, since William F. Skene's monumental and revolutionary three-volume Celtic Scotland: A History of Ancient Alban (1876–1880), had been forced to acknowledge that "Celtic Scotland" was alive and healthy for a long time after the reign of David I. Michael Lynch followed and built upon Barrow's compromise solution, arguing that as David's reign progressed, his kingship became more Celtic. Despite its subtitle, in 2004 in the only full-volume study of David I's reign yet produced, David I: The King Who Made Scotland, its author Richard Oram further builds upon Lynch's picture, stressing continuity while placing the changes of David's reign in their context. ## Davidian Revolution However, while there may be debate about the importance or extent of the historical change in David I's era, no historian doubts that it was taking place. The reason is what Barrow and Lynch both call the "Davidian Revolution". David's "revolution" is held to underpin the development of later medieval Scotland, whereby the changes he inaugurated grew into most of the central institutions of the later medieval kingdom. Since Robert Bartlett's pioneering work, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (1993), reinforced by Moore's The First European Revolution, c. 970–1215 (2000), it has become increasingly apparent that better understanding of David's "revolution" can be achieved by recognising the wider "European revolution" taking place during this period. The central idea is that from the late 10th century onwards the culture and institutions of the old Carolingian heartlands in northern France and western Germany were spreading to outlying areas, creating a more recognisable "Europe". Scotland was just one of many "outlying" areas. ### Government and feudalism The widespread enfeoffment of foreign knights and the processes by which land ownership was converted from customary tenures into feudal, or otherwise legally-defined relationships, would revolutionise the way the Kingdom of Scotland was governed, as did the dispersal and installation of royal agents in the new mottes that were proliferating throughout the realm to staff newly created sheriffdoms and judiciaries for the twin purposes of law enforcement and taxation, bringing Scotland further into the "continental" model. Scotland in this period experienced innovations in governmental practices and the importation of foreign, mostly French, knights. It is to David's reign that the beginnings of feudalism are generally assigned. This is defined as "castle-building, the regular use of professional cavalry, the knight's fee" as well as "homage and fealty". David established large-scale feudal lordships in the west of his Cumbrian principality for the leading members of the French military entourage who kept him in power. Additionally, many smaller-scale feudal lordships were created. Steps were taken during David's reign to make the government of that part of Scotland he administered more like the government of Anglo-Norman England. New sheriffdoms enabled the King to effectively administer royal demesne land. During his reign, royal sheriffs were established in the king's core personal territories; namely, in rough chronological order, at Roxburgh, Scone, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Stirling and Perth. The Justiciarship too was created in David's reign. Although this institution had Anglo-Norman origins, in Scotland north of the Forth at least, it represented some form of continuity with an older office. ### Economy The revenue of his English earldom and the proceeds of the silver mines at Alston allowed David to produce Scotland's first coinage. These altered the nature of trade and transformed his political image. David was a great town builder. As Prince of the Cumbrians, David founded the first two burghs of "Scotland", at Roxburgh and Berwick. Burghs were settlements with defined boundaries and guaranteed trading rights, locations where the king could collect and sell the products of his cain and conveth (a payment made in lieu of providing the king hospitality). David founded around 15 burghs. Perhaps nothing in David's reign compares in importance to burghs. While they could not, at first, have amounted to much more than the nucleus of an immigrant merchant class, nothing would do more to reshape the long-term economic and ethnic shape of Scotland than the burgh. These planned towns were or dominated by English in culture and language; William of Newburgh wrote in the reign of William the Lion, that "the towns and burghs of the Scottish realm are known to be inhabited by English"; as well as transforming the economy, the dominance of an English influence would in the long term undermine the position of the Middle Irish language, giving birth to the idea of the Scottish Lowlands. ### Monastic patronage David was one of medieval Scotland's greatest monastic patrons. In 1113, in perhaps David's first act as Prince of the Cumbrians, he founded Selkirk Abbey for the Tironensians. David founded more than a dozen new monasteries in his reign, patronising various new monastic orders. Not only were such monasteries an expression of David's undoubted piety, they also functioned to transform Scottish society. Monasteries became centres of foreign influence and provided sources of literate men, able to serve the crown's growing administrative needs. These new monasteries, the Cistercian ones in particular, introduced new agricultural practices. Cistercian labour, for instance, transformed southern Scotland into one of northern Europe's most important sources of sheep wool. ## Family tree ## Fictional portrayals - David the Prince (1980) by Nigel Tranter. The story of Queen Margaret's sons Alexander I and David I.

Cedar Hill Yard

Railway yard in New Haven, Connecticut, US

Cedar Hill Yard is a classification yard located in New Haven, North Haven and Hamden, Connecticut, United States. It was built by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (often known simply as The New Haven) in the early 1890s in and around New Haven's Cedar Hill neighborhood, which gave the yard its name. Electrical catenary for electric locomotives was added to the yard in 1915. To handle increasing traffic as a result of World War I, the yard was greatly expanded between 1917 and 1920 with additional construction along both sides of the Quinnipiac River. The construction project added two humps where railroad cars were sorted into trains by gravity. The yard was further modernized in the 1920s, becoming one of the busiest railroad yards in the United States, and the most important yard in the entire New Haven Railroad system. At its peak during World War II, Cedar Hill Yard handled more than 5,000 railroad cars per day. Following the end of the war the yard's importance began to decline, as freight traffic across New England shifted to road transport, and heavy industry left the region. Much of the yard began to fall into decay following the New Haven Railroad's bankruptcy in 1961. Following the opening of the newly rebuilt Selkirk Yard near Albany, New York, in 1968, much of the traffic formerly handled at Cedar Hill Yard was directed there instead, and car float service between Cedar Hill Yard and New York City ended. In 1969, the Penn Central Transportation Company took over the yard as part of its purchase of the New Haven Railroad. The yard's new owner promptly removed the electrical catenary and shut down one of the yard's two humps to save money. The next year, Penn Central went bankrupt, and the yard continued to deteriorate from deferred maintenance. Under Penn Central, the yard's importance further declined when the Poughkeepsie Bridge, the yard's key link to the rest of the United States, was damaged by a fire in 1974 and not replaced. Conrail, a new freight railroad formed by the United States government to reverse the fortunes of Penn Central and other bankrupt Northeastern United States railroads, took over operations in 1976. The yard's new owner initially made some improvements, but in 1980 decided to close the yard's remaining hump and move more operations to the yard in Selkirk. Cedar Hill Yard continued to be used to classify freight trains, but was turned into a flat yard, with trains built up and broken down by switcher locomotives. Cedar Hill Yard was operated by Conrail until 1999, when CSX Transportation purchased Conrail's New England operations. In the first decade of the 2000s, CSX expanded the yard's operations by constructing a bulk cargo transfer facility, where bulk commodities are transferred between trains and trucks. CSX was joined in the yard by other railroads, including Amtrak, which uses part of the yard as a base for maintenance of way operations on the Northeast Corridor. Two other freight railroads also operate freight trains to and from the yard in the 2020s, including the Providence and Worcester Railroad and Connecticut Southern Railroad. Cedar Hill Yard remains the largest classification yard in Connecticut as of 2022 despite its diminished size. Proposals exist to rebuild portions of the yard, potentially in concert with the construction of the proposed Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel in New York City or the resumption of car float service across Long Island Sound. ## History ### Before 1917 The first instance of Cedar Hill Yard was built in the early 1890s by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (The New Haven) in and around the Cedar Hill neighborhood of the city of New Haven, on flat lands adjacent to the Quinnipiac River. The yard first opened for service in December 1894, with a capacity of approximately 400 railroad cars. Less than a year later, the new yard caused a dispute between the railroad and its employees. Once Cedar Hill Yard opened, train crews had to stop their trains within the new yard as opposed to the yard in New Haven proper, which reportedly increased their shifts by several hours. Employees demanded extra pay for the longer hours, but the railroad refused, leading several train crews to walk off the job. One railway man was quoted by a local newspaper as saying: > We think that it is no more than fair that extra pay be given us for all work over eight hours for yard men and all over ten hours for through men. Those men who run into New Haven and were ordered to take their trains to Cedar Hill, were done an injustice. It takes at least two hours to sidetrack a train there and get back into the city and I do not blame the men for refusing to do it unless paid for extra time. Operations at the yard came to a halt on November 21, 1901, when approximately 125 switchmen and brakemen went on strike in solidarity with strikers at Mott Haven. The New Haven's president John M. Hall asserted the strike would quickly end, as the strikers had no specific grievances beyond sympathy for the Mott Haven strikers, who had gone on strike following the abrupt termination of the yard's assistant yard master. The strike came to an end on November 23. On July 31, 1904, a deadly train collision occurred just outside of Cedar Hill Yard. The New Haven's White Mountain passenger train collided with the rear of a freight train attempting to pull into a siding by the yard, resulting in the death of the White Mountain's engineer, while the train's fireman survived with severe injuries. A coroner found the crew of the freight train criminally responsible for the crash, as they had neglected to send a flagman behind their train to warn the White Mountain, which they knew was due to arrive, that the tracks were not clear. As a result of the crash, operations were changed so that all northbound trains entered the yard at the south end. In 1913, the New Haven began adding electrical catenary to the yard as part of its electrification program; electrification was completed by July 1915. By 1915, it was apparent the existing yard was not large enough to handle the amount of freight it was receiving. A local newspaper reported that "There were so many freight cars lying in the yard that switchers could not travel from the north to the south end of the yards." The severity of the freight congestion was enough to delay the New Haven's passenger trains through the area as well. ### The yard is expanded, 1917 to 1920 The New Haven Railroad purchased approximately 500 acres (200 ha) of land in the Cedar Hill area in 1917 in order to construct a new classification yard. Originally, the company had planned to build a new yard in nearby Woodmont, but instead built it at Cedar Hill due to local opposition. Construction began the same year. The expansion project was initially budgeted at $10 million ($ in ), but upon the United States Railroad Administration's takeover of all U.S. railroads in December 1917 following U.S. entry into World War I, the federal government doubled the project's budget to $20 million and allocated government engineers to assist in construction. This greatly increased the scope of the project, with the terminal and facilities estimated to take up more than 2,000 acres (810 ha) of land in total upon completion. #### Design Cedar Hill was chosen as the site for the new classification yard for a variety of reasons. New Haven was the nexus of eight different railroad routes operated by the New Haven Railroad, including lines to New York City, Danbury, Waterbury, Northampton, Hartford, Middletown, New London, and the docks in New Haven south of the yard. Cedar Hill was also the eastern end of the New Haven's electrification, was centrally located in the railroad's system, and was at a good location for locomotives travelling between New York City and Boston to stop for servicing. Other factors included the significant industrial activity in the city of New Haven, the high cost of buying property any closer to New York City, and the New Haven's existing facilities and land in the area. The yard's design called for a capacity of 180 cars per hour over two humps, for a classification capacity of 4,320 cars each day. Significant design work went into planning the height and slope of the yard's humps, so that cars rolling downhill would travel at the desired speeds, accelerating up to 18 mph (29 km/h) after passing through the switches. Several tracks were planned that travelled between the humps and the classification yards and accommodated speeders; these were used by the workers who rode along with the cars down the hump and manually applied handbrakes to slow them down. Using speeders to return to the hump instead of walking saved time and required fewer workers to handle the same number of cars per hour. Additional planned facilities included a yard for storing materials and a coal storage yard with a capacity of 100,000 short tons (91,000 t) of coal. As part of the yard's construction, the New Haven completed a grade separation at the south end of the yard, where lines from New Haven to Hartford, New London, and Middletown met. This eliminated all diamond crossings between different routes at Cedar Hill, removing a long-standing bottleneck on the New Haven Railroad's system. #### Construction The site for the new expanded yard largely consisted of marshland, which complicated construction. Over 3,000,000 cubic yards (2,300,000 m³) of fill was required for the project, which had to be delivered from cuts made elsewhere on the New Haven system. In particular, the two humps had to be built on the previously flat land, with one of them being 30 feet (9 m) in height. To accomplish this, trestles were built and then buried with fill, creating the hills needed for the humps. Construction of the trestles required piles to be driven up to 60 feet (18 m) underground due to the soft soil. For moving and transporting soil, the New Haven Railroad purchased 120 side-dump gondolas, and seven steam shovels worked to fill the side-dump cars at cut sites. Locomotives backed trains of 15 gondolas at a time up the trestles, and dumped fill under them until the fill was level with the tracks, leaving the trestles covered by soil. As part of the yard's expansion, a new freight transfer station to handle less-than-car load freight was built, which opened in July 1920. This eleven-track transfer facility was equipped with what were at the time very modern battery-powered freight tractors to sort freight throughout the facility, and could handle over 300 freight cars per day. As a result of the opening of the transfer facility, located in the center of the yard, the New Haven Railroad was able to close multiple similar but less modern facilities across its system. The new Cedar Hill Yard finished construction in 1920. At the time of its completion, Cedar Hill was the largest railyard east of the Mississippi River in the United States. ### 1920 to 1950 Despite hopes that the new yard would eliminate traffic problems, traffic volumes continued to skyrocket after the new Cedar Hill Yard opened, and in the first few years of operations it suffered from congestion. The freight portion of the nearby Water Street Yard, which was closed when the expansion of Cedar Hill Yard was completed, was reopened in March 1922 to relieve capacity issues. The next year, one local manufacturer declared at a hearing of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) that the new yard had failed in improving capacity and speed of freight shipments, a sentiment shared by Grand Trunk Pacific Railway president Howard G. Kelley. Kelley was part of the Storrow committee, a group working to draft policy for the New England railroad system. That the New Haven had spent so much money to build Cedar Hill Yard was considered by critics and some members of the committee as evidence that New England's railroads should be consolidated into a single system, though the ICC's commissioners were skeptical of such a proposal. An automatic train stop system was installed from Cedar Hill Yard north to Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1925, with it entering operation on the first of September. In 1926, Cedar Hill handled 97,328 cars per month, for an average of 3,200 cars each day. Particularly busy days saw over 4,000 cars classified in 24 hours. By 1928, Cedar Hill Yard and its surrounding facilities occupied 880 acres (360 ha) of land. The massive yards had a capacity of over 15,000 railroad cars. On August 29, 1928, an attempt was made by unknown person(s) to sabotage an express passenger train travelling from Montreal to Washington, D.C., through the yard. A railroad employee walking along the tracks noticed a railroad spike lodged into the rails in an attempt to derail the train, which was carrying over $2 million ( in dollars) worth of gold along with over 350 passengers. A derailment was averted when the employee flagged down the train, which reportedly came to a stop 30 feet (9 m) away from the spike. In 1929, the New Haven commenced another major project to improve the yard by adding retarders and wiring switches to be remotely operated from control towers, improving both the safety and speed of the classification process. In total, 44 retarders were installed at Cedar Hill, along with 88 switches converted. This allowed an end to the practice of workers riding along each car going down the hump and applying handbrakes, improving safety and reducing the number of workers required to run the yard. In 1932, the New Haven reported that the installation of retarders at Cedar Hill Yard had reduced the time it took to classify cars by 35 percent, along with a reduction in expenses. By 1941, Cedar Hill Yard held the title of "the world's largest single-railroad-operated freight yard". A tour granted to a reporter for the Meriden Record in 1941 affords a snapshot of how the yard operated at its peak immediately before World War II. The reporter arrived at the yard on a train from Springfield, Massachusetts, and observed his train being reclassified over one of the yard's humps. The train was first inspected for defects by eight car inspectors, and then sent over the hump. The 70-car train was fully sorted in 14 minutes. The railroad operated four control towers to run the yard, which were linked to each other by a PA system and the world's longest pneumatic tube system, with one tube stretching for three miles (4.8 km) and requiring seven minutes for a cartridge to travel from one end to the other. At the time of the reporter's visit, the yard's twin roundhouses serviced 44 freight locomotives, 185 passenger locomotives, and 8 switchers each day. Cedar Hill Yard was at its busiest during World War II, with very heavy traffic in support of the war effort. In 1943, particularly busy days saw as many as 5,000 cars classified in a 24 hour period. The railroad faced challenges due to labor shortages at this time, as a result of many men being drafted to fight in the war. During the war, a significant amount of traffic travelled between New York City and the yard by car float, moved by the New Haven Railroad's fleet of tugboats. ### 1950 to 1969 A fire broke out on one of the yard's bridges across the Quinnipiac River on July 5, 1953. The three-track bridge, 300 feet (91 m) in length, was completely destroyed. Traffic was rerouted over alternate trestles until the repairs, estimated by a New Haven Railroad spokesperson to cost up to $100,000 ( dollars), could be completed. A 1954 inventory showed Cedar Hill Yard including the following facilities: In 1958, the yard handled over 3,000 cars each day. 1958 would also be the last profitable year for operations at Cedar Hill Yard for many years; ironically, this was thanks to significant business hauling concrete for highway construction. These same highways made truck transportation more viable, and reduced the amount of railroad shipments to and from the yard. On August 16, 1959, the New Haven decided to close the western hump after a fire damaged the bridge and tracks connecting it to the rest of the yard. Traffic was redirected to the railroad's Maybrook Yard in Maybrook, New York. The remaining hump and the yard at Maybrook were unable to handle all of the traffic, requiring the railroad hastily rebuild the damaged tracks and bridge and return the western hump to service, which was completed on March 28, 1960, at an expense of $200,000 (). The New Haven's initial decision not to replace the damaged bridge resulted in criticism; a union observer testified to the Connecticut public utilities commission that delays from the damaged bridge resulted in train crews and locomotives spending hours at a time idling, an expense the financially troubled railroad could ill afford. The following year, the New Haven's financial problems forced it into bankruptcy, and conditions at the yard began to decline due to deferred maintenance. Car float service between Cedar Hill Yard and New York and New Jersey ended in 1968, when Selkirk Yard was rebuilt, resulting in a significant reduction in traffic. ### Penn Central takes over, 1969 to 1976 In 1969, the bankrupt New Haven Railroad was merged into newly-formed Penn Central Transportation Company, which inherited the yard. Soon after, Penn Central shut down the western hump at the yard, leaving only one hump in operation. That same year, electrified operations were discontinued, and the catenary in the yard was dismantled. Under Penn Central, the yard was largely in a state of decay. The retarders in the yard had never been upgraded or replaced since their installation in 1929, and were no longer able to apply enough force to cars to slow them. The employees came up with a solution that was dubbed the 'toothpick machine': workers in the yard placed pieces of wood ("toothpicks") on the rails in front of each car, to reduce their speed as they went down the hump. A 1974 U.S. Senate report assessing issues in agricultural transportation opined that "Considering the price of new lumber these days, it is quite possible a new retarder would be cheaper." On June 12, 1973, another trestle in the yard was destroyed by a fire. The trestle was part of a freight bypass that connected to the line towards Hartford from the north end of the yard. Penn Central was forced to route northbound trains from the yard through the city of New Haven until the trestle could be repaired. Operations at Cedar Hill were severely impacted by a fire on the Poughkeepsie Bridge in May 1974, which suspended all traffic between New Haven and points west that travelled across the bridge via the Maybrook Line. The bridge remained closed despite a directive to reopen it from Malcolm Wilson, the Governor of New York, later that year. Plans for rebuilding the bridge were repeatedly delayed, with New York representative Benjamin Gilman calling the situation a "seminar on government procrastination". A legal fight over the fate of the bridge continued for years, with Connecticut's congressional delegation opposed to the federal plan to abandon the bridge and route freight to Cedar Hill via a circuitous route through Albany, New York, and Springfield, Massachusetts. A representative of the Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) observed that freight shipments between Washington, D.C., and Boston increased in time from 6 hours to 31 hours when traveling this inland route. ### Conrail assumes operations, 1976 to 1999 Penn Central was merged into Conrail in 1976, along with many other bankrupt or troubled railroads in the Northeast, making Conrail the yard's new owner beginning in April. Working with the Connecticut Department of Transportation, Conrail began efforts to bring portions of Cedar Hill into a state of good repair. The company spent over $1 million ( in ) on track resurfacing and tie replacement between Cedar Hill and Hartford Yard by August 1976, four months after beginning operations at the yards, including replacement of over 15,000 ties in Cedar Hill, and the resurfacing (tamping) of 20 miles (32 km) of yard tracks. Conrail also rebuilt and reopened several tracks in the yard that had been out of service due to their unsafe condition, a consequence of deferred maintenance. The railroad projected it would spend over $3 million ( in ) on repairs between the two yards; Conrail's Northeast Region general manager told a local newspaper that "By the end of the year, 30,000 more ties will be installed in Cedar Hill and Hartford Yards and an additional 34 miles (55 km) of tracks surfaced". Conrail initially focused on expanding Trailer On FlatCar (TOFC) service in a joint project with the CTDOT. In August 1976, Cedar Hill averaged 34 TOFC loads per day, and Conrail projected this number to double upon the completion of a clearance raising project for a bridge in Berlin, Connecticut. Conrail also planned to rebuild the remaining hump to accommodate modern railcars. At the end of 1976, Conrail reported a 37 percent increase in traffic at the yard for November and December, thanks to the successful completion of the bridge raising project, which added six inches (15 cm) of clearance. In 1978, two years into Conrail's tenure, Cedar Hill was processing roughly 300 cars a day, significantly less than it had in the New Haven days. Of the 14 individual yards which made up Cedar Hill Yard, seven remained in use, with a maximum capacity of 4,000 cars per day. At this point the yard employed 200 workers, down from its peak of 1,000. Traffic declined precipitously due to the opening of the newly rebuilt and computerized Selkirk Yard, which took the majority of Cedar Hill's previous freight. Though Cedar Hill Yard remained the largest classification yard in New England, Conrail spokesman Robert McKernan summed up the change in the yards importance by stating that while it continued to be an indispensable link for freight traffic in southern Connecticut, the rebuilding of Selkirk Yard ended its status as essential for Southern New England as a whole. Primary commodities entering the yard at this point were trap rock, metals, food, chemicals, and general merchandise. Conrail also began to downsize its workforce at the yard, laying off dozens of employees between 1977 and 1979 and attracting the ire of Congressman Robert Giaimo. Amtrak, the national passenger rail operator formed by the United States Congress, acquired a portion of Cedar Hill Yard in April 1976 from Penn Central through the provisions of the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973. Amtrak took over the western portion of the yard, including the former western hump. In 1978, an Amtrak spokesman said of its portion of the yard that "Eventually it will be a major yard" used to support Amtrak services in Southern New England. The railroad initially used its space at the yard for storage along with a facility for continuous welded rail. Despite previous plans, the end of hump operations at Cedar Hill arrived in April 1980, when Conrail took the remaining hump out of service permanently. Short on funds and operating at a loss, Conrail downsized the yard in favor of the newer yard at Selkirk. From this point on, all operations were done by flat switching. In October 1981, facing continuing financial problems, Conrail announced its intention to file to abandon its line over the Hudson River via the Poughkeepsie Bridge, ending the prospect of the bridge returning to service. With the line abandoned, the key link between Cedar Hill Yard and the rest of the country was severed. Illegal dumping of toxic mercury was discovered in an abandoned portion of the yard in 1988, resulting in an investigation involving the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Environmental Protection Agency being launched. The next year, two men who owned an auto repair shop next to the yard were convicted of illegally disposing of the mercury and sentenced to prison time as a result of the investigation. Conrail employees at Cedar Hill Yard briefly went on strike on April 17, 1991, as part of a nationwide strike by railroad workers. This strike was ended the next day by a bill which banned railroad workers from striking, while also creating a committee to work out issues between railroad workers and employers, which was quickly passed by the United States Congress and signed by President George H. W. Bush. Amtrak formally established the Cedar Hill MOW Base at the yard in 1992. The facility supports Amtrak's maintenance operations on the New Haven–Springfield Line and in New Haven, and equipment used for these purposes is stored at the yard. ### CSX assumes control, 1999 to present In 1999, Conrail's lines in New England were purchased by CSX Transportation. Following its assumption of operations, CSX began to develop Cedar Hill Yard in the early 2000s for the loading, unloading, and transfer of bulk cargo such as lumber and cement between trucks and trains. The railroad has continued the TOFC business that was run by Conrail, but much of it is now moved between Cedar Hill Yard and CSX's West Springfield, Massachusetts yard by truck due to limited capacity on the New Haven–Springfield Line, which is a busy passenger train corridor. In the late 2000s, a new rail line was built to connect the yard to the port of New Haven. As of 2021, this line is operated by the Providence and Worcester Railroad. Amtrak discovered high concentrations of PCBs within its portion of the yard during track repairs in 2005 and 2006. The railroad has worked with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the United States Environmental Protection Agency to identify the scope of contamination and plan mitigation and cleanup. Following a request from both agencies, Amtrak completed testing within CSX's portion of the yard between 2017 and 2022 and confirmed PCBs were present there as well. Amtrak has reported it is working on a joint cleanup project with CSX as of 2023. A fire occurred in Cedar Hill Yard on July 23, 2016. The North Haven Fire Department responded to a report of a hopper car filled with construction debris on fire. The fire was extinguished without incident within a few hours. ## Present day As of 2021, CSX remains the owner and main operator at Cedar Hill Yard. Freight operations take place in the former Northbound Departure Yard and the North and Eastbound Classification Yard, both of which are now used for flat switching. The yard contains a TRANSFLO bulk cargo transfer terminal which handles transloading. From Cedar Hill, CSX operates local trains which serve freight customers on the New Haven Line, as well as the southern portion of the New Haven-Springfield Line. Connecticut Southern Railroad is under contract by CSX to move freight between Cedar Hill Yard and the yard in West Springfield, Massachusetts, on the CSX Berkshire Subdivision. Another occupant of the yard is Amtrak, which uses it to store equipment and as a base for maintenance of way operations on the Northeast Corridor in Connecticut. Amtrak occupies the portion of the yard west of the Quinnipiac River. The yard also contains the headquarters for the company's New England Division. As of 2016, Amtrak employs approximately 100 people at Cedar Hill. Some of Amtrak's yard is leased to a local manufacturer of welded rail. The Providence and Worcester Railroad leases a few tracks in the yard from CSX and Amtrak for locomotive servicing and freight use. The railroad also moves dedicated aggregate trains in and out of the yard. In the 21st century, much of the yard now lies abandoned and is an attraction for urban explorers, despite the dangers of the old buildings and facilities which contain lead paint and asbestos. The former New Haven Railroad coaling tower, built in 1927, stands abandoned to this day within Amtrak's portion of the yard and is a local landmark. ## Future plans While as of 2021 the yard was operating at a small fraction of its former level of activity, since the 1980s there have been several proposals that would increase traffic. The proposed Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel in New York City would result in more usage of Cedar Hill Yard. Since so much of the yard is not in use, advocates have proposed rebuilding the abandoned portions of the yard to handle new rail freight traffic from the tunnel if it is built. Officials in Connecticut have supported this proposal as a means of reducing truck traffic on the frequently congested Connecticut Turnpike between New York City and New Haven. Additionally, in 2011, a proposal was considered to reintroduce car float service between New Haven and New Jersey, with Cedar Hill Yard as the staging location for the New Haven terminus. ## Location As built, the yard was situated where three railroad lines met, all of which remain in service as of 2022. These are the Shore Line Railway, which travelled east along the Connecticut coast past New Haven; the Hartford and New Haven Railroad, which travelled north to Hartford and Springfield; and the "Air Line" (Boston and New York Air-Line Railroad) which travelled northeast from New Haven towards Middletown. By the time the first instance of Cedar Hill Yard was constructed, all three companies were part of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, which controlled nearly all railroad traffic in Connecticut. Two other railroad lines formerly entered New Haven near the yard: the New Haven and Northampton Railroad (the "Canal Line") diverged northward from the Shore Line Railway less than a mile west of Cedar Hill Yard, while in East Haven the New Haven and Derby Railroad connected New Haven to Derby. The New Haven and Derby line was abandoned in 1938, and in 1987 the connection with the Canal Line was cut due to low clearances that blocked modern railroad cars from entering and exiting the line. In the 21st century, the former Hartford and New Haven Railroad line is now Amtrak's New Haven–Springfield Line, the Air Line is part of the Providence and Worcester Railroad, and the Shore Line is part of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. ## See also - Electrification of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad - Northup Avenue Yard

Priestfield Stadium

Association football stadium in Kent, England

Priestfield Stadium (popularly known simply as Priestfield and officially known from 2007 to 2010 as KRBS Priestfield Stadium and from 2011 to 2023 and again from 2024 as MEMS Priestfield Stadium for sponsorship purposes) is a football stadium in Gillingham, Kent. It has been the home of Gillingham Football Club since the club's formation in 1893, and was also the temporary home of Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club for two seasons during the 1990s. The stadium has also hosted women's and youth international football matches and a London Broncos rugby league match. The stadium underwent extensive redevelopment during the late 1990s, which has brought its capacity down from nearly 20,000 to a current figure of 11,582. It has four all-seater stands, all constructed since 1997, although one is only of a temporary nature. There are also conference and banqueting facilities and a nightspot named The Factory. Despite having invested heavily in its current stadium, Gillingham F.C. has plans to relocate to a new stadium. ## History New Brompton Football Club, the forerunner of Gillingham Football Club, formed in June 1893. At the same time an area of land in Gillingham was acquired by the club's founders, the purchase being funded through an issue of 1,500 £1 shares. The stadium was initially referred to simply as the Athletic Ground and subsequently named Priestfield Road until 1947, after one of roads leading to it. A pitch was laid and a pavilion erected, and the first matches at Priestfield were staged on 2 September 1893. New Brompton's reserve team played Grays, followed immediately by the first match for the club's first team, against Woolwich Arsenal's reserves. The admission charge for the two matches was 3d. A newspaper report on the matches noted that the club had recently purchased an additional acre and three-quarters of ground and had accepted a contract for the construction of a stand containing 500 seats. Most spectators stood on terracing, banked earth, or simply along the perimeter of the pitch, as was the case at most football grounds at the time. In order to raise funds to assist with the running of the football club, New Brompton allowed the ground to be used for other events, such as smoking concerts, fêtes, athletics meetings and a ladies' football match. Sheep were allowed to graze on the pitch during the week, a common practice at many grounds at that time. In 1899, a second stand was added along part of the Gordon Road side of the ground, reportedly built by off-duty dock workers in exchange for beer and cigarettes. By 1908, the total number of seats had been increased to 800 and terracing added at the Rainham end of the ground. In 1912, the club's first Supporters' Association was formed, its initial project being to raise the necessary funds to construct terracing at the opposite end of the ground. Two years later the club, which had changed its name to Gillingham F.C. in 1912, secured a bank loan of £1,570 which was used to build a new grandstand, but just a month after it was completed the stand was severely damaged by high winds, which ripped off the roof and twisted most of the ironwork. The club sued the contractors, but it took a further three months for the damage to be repaired. A new attendance record was set in 1924 when an FA Cup match against First Division leaders Cardiff City drew a crowd of 19,472. This record stood until 1948, when 23,002 fans watched Gillingham take on Queens Park Rangers in the FA Cup, with many more turned away. In the same year the club, which had lost its place in the Football League ten years earlier after failing to gain re-election, produced a glossy brochure as part of its bid to be elected back into the league. The facilities at Priestfield were highlighted as one of the club's strengths in the brochure, which listed the ground's capacity as "between 25,000 and 30,000" but stated that plans had been drawn up to increase the capacity to 50,000, with 5,000 seats. The ground underwent its most extensive redevelopment to date in 1955, at a total cost of £28,500. The previously sloping pitch was levelled, the terracing that occupied part of the Gordon Road side of the ground replaced, and new covered accommodation, known as the Stanley Stand, erected between the Rainham End and Gordon Road Stand. The first floodlights were erected in 1963, at a cost of over £14,000, but this was to be the last significant development work at Priestfield for over thirty years. By the early 1980s the capacity of the ground was listed as 22,000, although this was reduced to 19,000 when the Gordon Road Stand was closed for safety reasons. In 1987, a clock was erected at the corner of the Rainham End and the Stanley Stand, dubbed the Lord Sondes Clock in honour of Henry Milles-Lade, 5th Earl Sondes, a member of the club's board of directors. The clock was removed during later stadium redevelopment work. New owner Paul Scally took over at the club in 1995 and soon instigated a programme of redevelopment which completely transformed the formerly run-down ground. A new Gordon Road Stand was built in 1997 at a cost of more than £2 million. A vote of supporters initially proposed that the new stand be named "The Paul Scally Stand", but this was rejected by its namesake as he felt "uncomfortable and embarrassed" by the idea. Two years later the Rainham End terracing was replaced with a new all-seater stand, with the sports centre behind it demolished and replaced with a car park. The main stand on the northern side of the pitch was demolished in 1999, along with a section of away terracing, to be replaced with a new state-of-the-art facility dubbed the Medway Stand, but the work was beset by problems. Due to serious delays with the building of the new stand, the club was forced to spend most of the subsequent season first with that side of the ground completely empty, then later with building work ongoing. Supporters were not able to sit in the new stand until the latter stages of the 1999–2000 season, and even then many of the facilities had not been finished. The stand also caused severe financial problems for the club, as its facilities eventually cost significantly more than the original estimate. The stand was named following a vote by Gillingham supporters. The fourth side of the ground was redeveloped in 2003 when the Town End terracing was removed and a temporary stand put in its place, named after the late football commentator and Gillingham supporter Brian Moore. It was hoped that work would begin on a permanent Brian Moore Stand in 2004, but due to talk of relocating the club to a new ground and the club's current financial problems, this has been put on hold. On 1 June 2007, the stadium was officially renamed KRBS Priestfield Stadium as part of a sponsorship deal that lasted three years with the Kent Reliance Building Society. In 2011 another such deal led to the rebranding of the stadium as MEMS Priestfield Stadium. ## Structure and facilities The pitch is surrounded by four all-seater stands – the Medway Stand, the Rainham End, the Gordon Road Stand and the Brian Moore Stand. All are covered with the exception of the Brian Moore Stand. The Medway Stand, which replaced the old Main Stand and part of the terracing at each end, is the largest and northernmost of the four. It has two tiers with a row of twenty executive boxes between the top and bottom tier. The stand also contains the changing rooms, physiotherapy facilities, club offices and club shop. The Rainham End, located behind the goal at the eastern end of the pitch, opened in 1999 and houses 2,400 fans. This stand, like the terrace it replaced, is known for housing the club's most vocal supporters. The Gordon Road Stand, which seats 2,600, was opened in 1997 and is opposite the Medway Stand. Due to planning requirements, the stand had a height restriction placed upon it, making it significantly lower than the other three sides of the ground, and due to the road layout behind it is narrower at one end than the other. A gantry for television cameras is located on the roof of this stand. Opposite the Rainham End is the Brian Moore Stand. This stand is a temporary one, and accommodates visiting supporters. It occupies the site of the former Town End terracing, which was unusual in that it had a pronounced slope, with one end of the terracing being higher up than the other. In 1955 the pitch, which previously sloped at that end of the stadium, was levelled out but the gradient of the Town End was left unchanged. The state of the stadium's pitch caused the club severe problems in 2003. A number of fixtures had to be postponed due to the state of the pitch, which was described as resembling a ploughed field, and the surface had to be heavily sanded before an FA Cup match against Leeds United. At the end of the season, taking advantage of the demolition of the old Town End, which allowed better access to the pitch, the club had the drainage system replaced and a completely new pitch laid. Added to the new stands were several new developments. The Conference and Banqueting Centre, which is located behind the Rainham End, comprises the Great Hall, which can accommodate up to 600 delegates for events, and twenty smaller delegate rooms. The centre is connected to the Medway Stand, thus allowing views from the banqueting suite onto the pitch, and is also licensed for wedding ceremonies. The Blues Rock Café nightspot, located within the Medway Stand, is open between four and five nights a week and stages live music and screenings of major sporting events. The club purchased many of the fixtures and fittings for these new developments at discounted prices when the furnishings of the Millennium Dome were sold off upon its closure. ## Future Former Gillingham chairman Paul Scally made it clear that he intended to relocate the club away from its current stadium, announcing in September 2003 that "there is no future for the club at the Priestfield". In 2004, the club outlined plans for a new stadium at Cuxton but abandoned them soon afterwards due to the cost of improving transport links to the site. At the time Scally stated that he anticipated the club moving within four years, but by 2007 the proposed date had been pushed back to 2010. In March 2017, he again identified Mill Hill, on the east of the A289 Yokosuka Way, as his preferred site for a new stadium, re-iterated that this was necessary for the club to have ambitions of future Premier League football, and that he would be launching a bond scheme to fund the early stages of the development. Despite the proposed move, the club promoted its facilities, in conjunction with Medway Council, as a possible training base for athletes competing in the 2012 Summer Olympics, saying: > The Medway Stand is fully equipped with physio rooms, a hydrotherapy pool, a sauna and steam rooms to assist with the athletes' training, and a lounge bar, a cinema and a snooker room for them to enjoy during their free time. The club's offices, media centre and press room could also provide the coaches with a good administrative base. We are excited about the prospect of international athletes benefiting from our excellent facilities in preparation for London 2012. In December 2007, Gillingham shareholders passed a resolution to sell the ground to Priestfield Developments Ltd, a company wholly owned by Paul Scally, for £9.8m as part of a restructuring of the club's debts. The deal was to allow three years use of the stadium at £1 p.a., with the club meeting running costs, with tenure secured for a further seven years at a rent as yet unspecified. In 2011, however, the club purchased the stadium back for around 10% of the fee paid by Priestfield Developments. ## Other uses The stadium has occasionally been the "home" of clubs other than Gillingham. In 1895, Woolwich Arsenal played a Second Division home game against Burton Swifts at Priestfield after their own Manor Ground had been closed by the Football League for five weeks after crowd trouble at a match there earlier that year. Over a century later, during the 1997–98 and 1998–99 seasons Brighton & Hove Albion played their home matches at Priestfield, as they had entered a ground-share agreement with Gillingham as a result of the sale of their Goldstone Ground to property developers. The move, undertaken by the club after a plan to groundshare with Portsmouth fell through, was a controversial one for Brighton's fans, who faced a 150 mi (240 km) round trip to each home game. The two clubs subsequently became embroiled in a dispute over the charges levied by Gillingham for the hire of the ground, which was eventually settled out of court in 2001. In May 2012 the London Broncos hosted a rugby league match at the stadium, the first Super League match to be staged in Kent, and the club later announced the possibility of making Priestfield their permanent home venue with effect from 2013, although this did not occur. In April 2006, the ground hosted the England women's team's World Cup Qualifier against Austria, achieving a gate of 8,068 (a higher attendance than Gillingham's average home gate for the 2005–06 season). Priestfield has also been the venue for home matches for the England youth team, including a November 2007 match against their counterparts from Ghana. A greyhound racing track was opened around the outside of the pitch in December 1927. The racing was independent of the National Greyhound Racing Club and as such was known as a flapping track. ## Records The highest attendance recorded at Priestfield was 23,002 for a match against Queens Park Rangers in the FA Cup 3rd round on 10 January 1948. The highest Football League attendance was 20,128 against Millwall in the Third Division South on 2 September 1950. The record modern (all-seated) attendance is 11,418, set on 20 September 2003 against West Ham United in the First Division. The highest seasonal average attendance for league matches at Priestfield since Gillingham returned to the Football League in 1950 was 12,576 in the 1951–52 season. Gillingham's lowest seasonal average was 2,979 in the 1994–95 season, although Brighton recorded a lower figure of 2,328 in the 1997–98 season. ## Transport The stadium is approximately 0.5 mi (1 km) from Gillingham railway station, which lies on Southeastern's Chatham Main Line from London Victoria to Dover Priory and Ramsgate. The station is also the southern terminus of the North Kent Line, which connects to London Charing Cross.

Sultanate of Singora

Heavily fortified port city in southern Thailand

The Sultanate of Singora was a heavily fortified port city in southern Thailand and the precursor of the present-day town of Songkhla. It was founded in the early 17th century by a Persian, Dato Mogol, and flourished during the reign of his son, Sultan Sulaiman Shah. In 1680, after decades of conflict, the city was destroyed and abandoned; remains include forts, city walls, a Dutch cemetery and the tomb of Sultan Sulaiman Shah. An inscribed cannon from Singora bearing the seal of Sultan Sulaiman Shah is displayed next to the flagpole at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London. The sultanate's history was documented in accounts, letters and journals written by British and Dutch East India Company traders; its destruction was discussed in books and reports authored by representatives of the French embassies to Siam in the mid 1680s. Sultan Sulaiman's family history has also been chronicled: Princess Sri Sulalai, a consort of King Rama II and mother of King Rama III, was descended from Sultan Sulaiman; present-day descendants include the 22nd Prime Minister of Thailand and a former Navy admiral. Sources pertaining to the Singora cannon include articles published in academic journals and letters written by General Sir Harry Prendergast, commander of the Burma Expeditionary Force that captured Mandalay in the third Anglo-Burmese War. ## History ### Early history The Sultanate of Singora, sometimes known as Songkhla at Khao Daeng, was a port city in the deep south of Thailand and precursor of the present-day town of Songkhla. It was located near the southern tip of the Sathing Phra peninsula, on and around the foothills of Khao Daeng Mountain in Singha Nakhon. British and Dutch East India Company traders called the city Sangora; Japanese officials knew it as Shinichu; contemporary French writers used the names Singor, Cingor and Soncourat. Singora was founded in the early 17th century by Dato Mogol, a Persian Malay-Muslim who accepted Siamese suzerainty and paid tribute to the Kingdom of Ayutthaya. The port was said to be ideal and able to accommodate more than 80 large vessels; a network of overland and riverine routes expedited trans-peninsular trade with the Sultanate of Kedah. Jeremias van Vliet, Director of the Dutch East India Company's trading post in Ayuthaya, described Singora as one of Siam's principal cities and a major exporter of pepper; French traveller and gem merchant John Baptista Tavernier wrote about the city's abundant tin mines. A Cottonian manuscript at the British Library discusses Singora's duty-free policy and viability as a hub for regional trade: > itt were not amiss to build a strong howse in Sangora which lyeth 24 Leagues northwarde of Patania, under the gouerment of Datoe Mogoll, vassall to the King of Siam: In this place maie well the Rendezvouz bee made to bring all thinges together that you shall gather for the provideing of the ffactories of Siam, Cochinchina, Borneo and partlie our ffactorie in Japan, as you shall gather according to the advises thereof, And hither to bring all such wares as wee shall gather from the foresaid places to bee sent to Bantam and Jaccatra: this howse willbee found to bee verie Necessarie, for the charges willbee too highe in Patania besides inconveniences there; which charges you shall spare at Sangora: there you pay no Custome, onlie a small gift to Datoe Mogoll cann effect all here. Dato Mogol died in 1620 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Sulaiman. A period of turmoil erupted ten years later when the Queen of Pattani branded the new ruler of Siam, King Prasat Thong, a usurper and tyrant. The queen withheld tribute and ordered attacks on Ligor (present-day Nakhon Si Thammarat) and Bordelongh (present-day Phatthalung); Ayuthaya responded by blockading Pattani with an army of 60,000 men, as well as enlisting the help of the Dutch people in capturing the City. Singora became involved in the dispute and in 1633 sent an envoy to Ayuthaya requesting help. The outcome of this request is not known, but Dutch records show that Singora was severely damaged and the pepper crop destroyed. ### Independence In December 1641 Jeremias van Vliet left Ayuthaya and sailed to Batavia. He stopped en route at Singora in February 1642 and presented Sulaiman with a letter of introduction from the Phra Khlang (known by the Dutch as the Berckelangh), the Siamese official responsible for foreign affairs. Sulaiman's response sheds light on his attitude towards suzerainty: > On the 3rd of February the delegate van Vlieth landed at Sangora and was received by the governor, who was angry at the Berckelangh's letter, saying that his country was open to the Netherlanders without Siamese introduction and that the letter had not been necessary. This and other haughty acts displeased the Hon. van Vlieth. Later that year Sulaiman declared independence from Ayuthaya and appointed himself Sultan Sulaiman Shah. He modernised the port, ordered the construction of city walls and moats, and built a network of forts that spanned the harbour to the summit of Khao Daeng. Trade flourished: the city was frequented by Dutch and Portuguese merchants and enjoyed amicable relations with Chinese traders. Ayuthaya tried at least three times to reclaim Singora during Sulaiman's reign; each attack failed. One naval campaign ended in ignominy when the Siamese admiral abandoned his post. To help fend off overland assaults, Sulaiman assigned his brother, Pharisees, to strengthen the nearby town of Chai Buri in Phatthalung. Sultan Sulaiman died in 1668 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Mustapha. A war with Pattani broke out soon after, but despite being outnumbered more than four to one, Singora rejected attempts at mediation by the Sultan of Kedah and trusted in its army of experienced soldiers and cannoneers. During the late 1670s Greek adventurer Constance Phaulkon arrived in Siam. He sailed to the country from Java on a British East India Company vessel and, heeding orders from his employer, promptly embarked on a mission to smuggle arms to Singora. His escapade ended in failure when he was shipwrecked. ### Destruction In 1679 Ayuthaya mounted a final offensive to quash the Singora rebellion. Samuel Potts, a British East India Company trader based in Singora, recorded the city's preparations for war: > This King has fortified his City, gunned his Forts upon the hills, making all the provision he can for his defence, not knowing how soon the King of Siam will oppose him. In a letter dated August 1679 Potts informed his East India Company colleague that the Siamese fleet had arrived and stressed the impending danger. The events that followed were decisive: in 1680, after a siege lasting more than six months, Singora was destroyed and abandoned. Contemporary French sources document the city's destruction and provide a wealth of detail. The head of the French East India Company's operations in Ayuthaya described how Singora's "trés bonne citadelle" had been razed after a war of more than thirty years; a missionary working in Ayuthaya in the mid 1680s told how the King of Siam sent his finest ships to destroy the sultanate "de fond en comble" (from top to bottom). Simon de la Loubère, France's envoy to Siam in 1687, recounted a story about a French cannoneer who crept into the city one night and single-handedly captured the sultan: > Some have upon this account informed me a thing, which in my opinion, will appear most incredible. 'Tis of a provincial named Cyprian, who is still at Surat in the French Company's Service, if he has not quitted it, or if he is not lately dead: the name of his Family I know not. Before his entrance into the Companies service, he had served some time in the King of Siam's Army in quality of Canoneer (...) Cyprian wearied with seeing the Armies in view, which attempted no persons life, determin'd one night to go alone to the Camp of the Rebels, and to fetch the King of Singor into his Tent. He took him indeed, and brought him to the Siamese General, and so terminated a War of above twenty years. While Loubère's account of life in 17th-century Siam was well received by his contemporaries in France, the veracity of his tale about Cyprian and Singora's demise has been questioned. An article published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, for example, described it as "a story which might have passed in a romantic age, but it is too improbable for history". In a memo dated 1685 a French East India Company official claimed that Singora was finally captured by means of a ruse. Thailand's Ministry of Culture supports this version of events and discusses a spy who tricked his way into the city, enabling Siamese troops to enter and burn it to the ground. ### Cession to France In 1685 Siam attempted to cede Singora to France: the hope was that the French East India Company, supported by a garrison of troops, could rebuild the city, establish a trading post and counter the strong regional Dutch influence. The city was offered to France's envoy to Siam, the Chevalier de Chaumont, and a provisional treaty signed in December; Siamese ambassador Kosa Pan sailed to France the following year to ratify the cession. The French, however, were not interested: Secretary of State for the Navy, the Marquis de Seignelay, told Kosa Pan that Singora was ruined and of no further use, and asked for a trading post in Bangkok instead. ## Landmarks After Singora had been destroyed, Sultan Sulaiman's sons were pardoned and assigned to new positions in Siam. Later generations of Sultan Sulaiman's family were closely connected with Siamese royalty: two of Sulaiman's descendants commanded armed forces led by Prince Surasi in the 1786 conquest of Pattani; Princess Sri Sulalai, a consort of King Rama II and mother of King Rama III, was also descended from Sultan Sulaiman. Present-day descendants include Admiral Niphon Sirithorn, a former Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Navy General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, the 22nd Prime Minister of Thailand; and a family of silk weavers at the Muslim village of Phumriang in Surat Thani. ### The forts at Khao Daeng Thailand's Ministry of Culture details the remains of fourteen forts on and around Khao Daeng Mountain. Forts 4, 8 and 9 are well preserved and characterise the sultanate's military architecture: fort 4 can be reached by ascending a flight of steps that starts behind the archaeological information centre, fort 8 is accessible via a stairway near the Sultan Sulaiman Shah mosque, fort 9 sits atop a small motte near the main road leading from Singha Nakhon to Ko Yo Island. Forts 5 and 6 occupy the upper slopes of the mountain and offer panoramic views of Lake Songkhla and the Gulf of Thailand. The two pagodas on the summit of Khao Daeng were built on the base of fort 10 during the 1830s to commemorate the suppression of rebellions in Kedah. In her book In the Land of Lady White Blood: Southern Thailand and the Meaning of History, Lorraine Gesick discussed a manuscript from Wat Pha Kho in Sathing Phra. The manuscript (which in Gesick's opinion dates from the late 17th century) consists mainly of an illustrated map about ten metres long that depicts Sultan Sulaiman's forts at Khao Daeng. A microfilm of this manuscript, made by American historian David Wyatt, is kept at the Cornell University Library. ### The tomb of Sultan Sulaiman Shah Located in a Muslim graveyard about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) north of Khao Daeng, the tomb of Sultan Sulaiman Shah is housed in a small, Thai-style pavilion surrounded by large trees. The cemetery is mentioned in the Sejarah Kerajaan Melayu Patani (History of the Malay Kingdom of Patani), a Javi account drawn mostly from the Hikayat Patani. The text describes Sultan Sulaiman as a Muslim raja who died in battle and the cemetery as "full of nothing but jungle". The tomb is an object of pilgrimage in the deep south of Thailand, where Sultan Sulaiman is revered by Muslims and Buddhists alike. ### The Dutch cemetery About 300 metres (980 ft) from the tomb of Sultan Sulaiman is a Dutch cemetery known locally as the Vilanda Graveyard. The cemetery is located within the grounds of a PTT petroleum complex; permission is needed to gain access. In 1998 an investigation of the cemetery was conducted using ground-penetrating radar. The survey yielded detailed radargrams showing subsurface lime coffins that belonged to Singora's 17th-century Dutch community. A paper discussing these findings was presented to the IV meeting of the Environmental and Engineering Geophysical Society in Barcelona, September 1998. ## The Singora cannon Following Singora's destruction, Siamese troops seized and sent to Ayuthaya an inscribed cannon. The cannon remained there until it was captured during the Burmese-Siamese war of 1765–1767 and transported to Burma. It was then taken by the British in the third Anglo-Burmese War (1885–1887) and shipped to England. In 1887 it was presented to the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London and put on display next to the flagpole in the grounds of the Figure Court. The cannon bears eleven inscriptions, nine of which have been carved in Arabic characters and inlaid with silver. One inscription refers to the engraver, Tun Juma'at Abu Mandus of Singora; another is set within a circular arabesque design and reads "The seal of Sultan Sulaiman Shah, the Victorious King". Sources pertaining to the Singora cannon's journey to London include the Hmannan Yazawin (the first official chronicle of Burma's Konbaung dynasty) and reports written by General Sir Harry Prendergast, commander of the Burma Expeditionary Force that captured Mandalay in the third Anglo-Burmese war. The Hmannan Yazawin provides an inventory of weapons taken by the Burmese after the sack of Ayuthaya, noting that most guns were destroyed and only the finest pieces conveyed to Burma. Correspondence between General Prendergast and his superiors in India details ordnance seized during the Burma campaign and lists cannon sent as presents to Queen Victoria, the Viceroy of India, British governors of Madras and Bombay, the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, Portsmouth and Plymouth dockyards, and the Royal Hospital Chelsea. A letter at the Royal Hospital refers to the Singora cannon as a Burmese trophy gun received from the Government of India in October 1887.

The Third of May 1808

1814 painting by Francisco de Goya

The Third of May 1808 in Madrid (also known as El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid or Los fusilamientos de la montaña del Príncipe Pío, or Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo. Commonly known as The Third of May 1808.) is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808 in the Peninsular War. Along with its companion piece of the same size, The Second of May 1808 (or The Charge of the Mamelukes), it was commissioned by the provisional government of Spain at Goya's own suggestion shortly after the ousting of the French occupation and the restoration of King Ferdinand VII. The painting's content, presentation, and emotional force secure its status as a ground-breaking, archetypal image of the horrors of war. Although it draws on many sources from both high and popular art, The Third of May marks a clear break from convention. Diverging from the traditions of Christian art and traditional depictions of war, it has no distinct precedent, and is acknowledged as one of the first paintings of the modern era. According to the art historian Kenneth Clark, The Third of May 1808 is "the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention". The Third of May 1808 inspired Gerald Holtom's peace sign and a number of later major paintings, including a series by Édouard Manet, and Pablo Picasso's Massacre in Korea and Guernica. ## Background Napoleon I of France declared himself First Consul of the French Republic on November 10, 1799, and crowned himself Emperor in 1804. Because Spain controlled access to the Mediterranean, the country was politically and strategically important to French interests. The reigning Spanish sovereign, Charles IV, was internationally regarded as ineffectual. Even in his own court he was seen as a "half-wit king who renounces cares of state for the satisfaction of hunting", and a cuckold unable to control his energetic wife, Maria Luisa of Parma. Napoleon took advantage of the weak king by suggesting the two nations conquer and divide Portugal, with France and Spain each taking a third of the spoils, and the final third going to the Spanish Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy, along with the title Prince of the Algarve. Godoy was seduced, and accepted the French offer. He failed, however, to grasp Napoleon's true intentions, and was unaware that his new ally and co-sovereign, the former king's son Ferdinand VII of Spain, was using the invasion merely as a ploy to seize the Spanish parliament and throne. Ferdinand intended not only that Godoy be killed during the impending power struggle, but also that the lives of his own parents be sacrificed. Under the guise of reinforcing the Spanish armies, 23,000 French troops entered Spain unopposed in November 1807. Even when Napoleon's intentions became clear the following February, the occupying forces found little resistance apart from isolated actions in disconnected areas, including Zaragoza. Napoleon's principal commander, Marshal Joachim Murat, believed that Spain would benefit from rulers more progressive and competent than the Bourbons, and Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte was to be made king. After Napoleon convinced Ferdinand to return Spanish rule to Charles IV, the latter was left with no choice but to abdicate, on March 19, 1808, in favor of Joseph Bonaparte. Although the Spanish people had accepted foreign monarchs in the past, they deeply resented the new French ruler. A French agent in Madrid wrote that "Spain is different. The Spaniards have a noble and generous character, but they have a tendency to ferocity and cannot bear to be treated as a conquered nation. Reduced to despair, they would be prepared to unleash the most terrible and courageous rebellion, and the most vicious excesses." On May 2, 1808, provoked by news of the planned removal to France of the last members of the Spanish royal family, the people of Madrid rebelled in the Dos de Mayo Uprising. A proclamation issued that day to his troops by Marshal Murat read: "The population of Madrid, led astray, has given itself to revolt and murder. French blood has flowed. It demands vengeance. All those arrested in the uprising, arms in hand, will be shot." Goya commemorated the uprising in his The Second of May, which depicts a cavalry charge against the rebels in the Puerta del Sol square in the center of Madrid, the site of several hours of fierce combat. Much the better known of the pair, The Third of May illustrates the French reprisals: before dawn the next day hundreds of Spaniards were rounded up and shot, at a number of locations around Madrid. Civilian Spanish opposition persisted as a feature of the ensuing five-year Peninsular War, the first to be called guerrilla war. Irregular Spanish forces considerably aided the Spanish, Portuguese, and British armies jointly led by Sir Arthur Wellesley, who first landed in Portugal in August 1808. By the time of the painting's conception, the public imagination had made the rioters symbols of heroism and patriotism. Like other Spanish liberals, Goya was placed in a difficult position by the French invasion. He had supported the initial aims of the French Revolution, and hoped for a similar development in Spain. Several of his friends, like the poets Juan Meléndez Valdés and Leandro Fernández de Moratín, were overt Afrancesados, the term for the supporters—collaborators in the view of many—of Joseph Bonaparte. Goya's 1798 portrait of the French ambassador-turned-commandant Ferdinand Guillemardet betrays a personal admiration. Although he maintained his position as court painter, for which an oath of loyalty to Joseph was necessary, Goya had by nature an instinctive dislike of authority. He witnessed the subjugation of his countrymen by the French troops. During these years he painted little, although the experiences of the occupation provided inspiration for drawings that would form the basis for his prints The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra). In February 1814, after the final expulsion of the French, Goya approached the provisional government with a request to "perpetuate by means of his brush the most notable and heroic actions of our glorious insurrection against the Tyrant of Europe". His proposal accepted, Goya began work on The Third of May. It is not known whether he had personally witnessed either the rebellion or the reprisals, despite many later attempts to place him at the events of either day. ## The painting ### Description The Third of May 1808 is set in the early hours of the morning following the uprising and centers on two masses of men: one a rigidly poised firing squad, the other a disorganized group of captives held at gunpoint. Executioners and victims face each other abruptly across a narrow space; according to Kenneth Clark, "by a stroke of genius [Goya] has contrasted the fierce repetition of the soldiers' attitudes and the steely line of their rifles, with the crumbling irregularity of their target." A square lantern situated on the ground between the two groups throws a dramatic light on the scene. The brightest illumination falls on the huddled victims to the left, whose numbers include a monk or friar in prayer. To the immediate right and at the center of the canvas, other condemned figures stand next in line to be shot. The central figure is the brilliantly lit man kneeling amid the bloodied corpses of those already executed, his arms flung wide in either appeal or defiance. His yellow and white clothing repeats the colors of the lantern. His plain white shirt and sun-burnt face show he is a simple laborer. On the right side stands the firing squad, engulfed in shadow and painted as a monolithic unit. Seen nearly from behind, their bayonets and their shako headgear form a relentless and immutable column. Most of the faces of the figures cannot be seen, but the face of the man to the right of the main victim, peeping fearfully towards the soldiers, acts as a repoussoir at the back of the central group. Without distracting from the intensity of the foreground drama, a townscape with a steeple looms in the nocturnal distance, probably including the barracks used by the French. In the background between the hillside and the shakos is a crowd with torches: perhaps onlookers, perhaps more soldiers or victims. The Second and Third of May are thought to have been intended as parts of a larger series. Written commentary and circumstantial evidence suggest that Goya painted four large canvases memorializing the rebellion of May 1808. In his memoirs of the Royal Academy in 1867, José Caveda wrote of four paintings by Goya of the second of May, and Cristóbal Ferriz—an artist and a collector of Goya—mentioned two other paintings on the theme: a revolt at the royal palace and a defense of artillery barracks. Contemporary prints stand as precedents for such a series. The disappearance of two paintings may indicate official displeasure with the depiction of popular insurrection. ### The Disasters of War Goya's series of aquatint etchings The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra) was not completed until 1820, although most of the prints were made in the period 1810–1814. The album of proofs given by Goya to a friend, however, now in the British Museum, provides many indications of the order in which both the preliminary drawings and the prints themselves were composed. The groups identified as the earliest clearly seem to predate the commission for the two paintings, and include two prints with obviously related compositions (illustrated), as well as I saw this, which is presumably a scene witnessed during Goya's trip to Saragossa. No se puede mirar (One cannot look at this) is clearly related compositionally and thematically; the female central figure has her arms outstretched, but pointing down, while another figure has his hands clasped in prayer, and several others shield or hide their faces. This time the soldiers are not visible even from behind; only the bayonets of their guns are seen. Y no hay remedio (And it cannot be helped) is another of the early prints, from a slightly later group apparently produced at the height of the war when materials were unobtainable, so that Goya had to destroy the plate of an earlier landscape print to make this and another piece in the Disasters series. It shows a shako-wearing firing squad in the background, this time seen receding in a frontal rather than a rear view. ### Iconography and invention At first the painting met with mixed reactions from art critics and historians. Artists had previously tended to depict war in the high style of history painting, and Goya's unheroic description was unusual for the time. According to some early critical opinion the painting was flawed technically: the perspective is flat, or the victims and executioners are standing too close together to be realistic. Although these observations may be strictly correct, the writer Richard Schickel argues that Goya was not striving for academic propriety but rather to strengthen the overall impact of the piece. The Third of May references a number of earlier works of art, but its power comes from its bluntness rather than its adherence to traditional compositional formulas. Pictorial artifice gives way to the epic portrayal of unvarnished brutality. Even the contemporary Romantic painters—who were also intrigued with subjects of injustice, war, and death—composed their paintings with greater attention to the conventions of beauty, as is evident in Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa (1818–1819) and Eugène Delacroix's 1830 painting Liberty Leading the People. The painting is structurally and thematically tied to traditions of martyrdom in Christian art, as exemplified in the dramatic use of chiaroscuro, and the appeal to life juxtaposed with the inevitability of imminent execution. However, Goya's painting departs from this tradition. Works that depicted violence, such as those by Jusepe de Ribera, feature an artful technique and harmonious composition which anticipate the "crown of martyrdom" for the victim. The man with raised arms at the focal point of the composition has often been compared to a crucified Christ, and a similar pose is sometimes seen in depictions of Christ's nocturnal Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Goya's figure displays stigmata-like marks on his right hand, while the lantern at the center of the canvas references a traditional attribute of the Roman soldiers who arrested Christ in the garden. Not only is he posed as if in crucifixion, he wears yellow and white: the heraldic colors of the papacy. The lantern as a source of illumination in art was widely used by Baroque artists, and perfected by Caravaggio. Traditionally a dramatic light source and the resultant chiaroscuro were used as metaphors for the presence of God. Illumination by torch or candlelight took on religious connotations; but in The Third of May the lantern manifests no such miracle. Rather, it affords light only so that the firing squad may complete its grim work, and provides a stark illumination so that the viewer may bear witness to wanton violence. The traditional role of light in art as a conduit for the spiritual has been subverted. The victim is as anonymous as his killers. His entreaty is addressed not to God in the manner of traditional painting, but to an unheeding and impersonal firing squad. He is not granted the heroism of individuality, but is merely part of a continuum of victims. Beneath him lies a bloody and disfigured corpse; behind and around him are others who will soon share the same fate. Here, for the first time, according to biographer Fred Licht, nobility in individual martyrdom is replaced by futility and irrelevance, the victimization of mass murder, and anonymity as a hallmark of the modern condition. The way the painting shows the progress of time is also without precedent in Western art. The death of a blameless victim had typically been presented as a conclusive episode, imbued with the virtue of heroism. The Third of May offers no such cathartic message. Instead, there is a continuous procession of the condemned in a mechanical formalization of murder. The inevitable outcome is seen in the corpse of a man, splayed on the ground in the lower left portion of the work. There is no room left for the sublime; his head and body have been disfigured to a degree that renders resurrection impossible. The victim is portrayed bereft of all aesthetic or spiritual grace. For the rest of the picture the viewer's eye level is mostly along the central horizontal axis; only here is the perspectival point of view changed, so that the viewer looks down on the mutilated body. Finally, there is no attempt by the artist to soften the subject's brutality through technical skill. Method and subject are indivisible. Goya's procedure is determined less by the mandates of traditional virtuosity than by his intrinsically morbid theme. The brushwork could not be described as pleasing, and the colors are restricted to earth tones and black, punctuated by bright flashes of white and the red blood of the victims. The quality of the pigment itself foreshadows Goya's later works: a granular solution producing a matte, sandy finish. Few would admire the work for painterly flourishes, such is its horrific force and its lack of theatricality. ## Provenance Despite the work's commemorative value, no details about its first exhibition are known, and it is not mentioned in any surviving contemporaneous accounts. This lack of commentary may be due to Fernando VII's preference for neoclassical art, and to the fact that popular revolts of any kind were not regarded as suitable subject matter by the restored Bourbons. A monument to the fallen in the uprising, also commissioned in 1814 by the provisional government, "was stopped by Ferdinand VII, in whose eyes the senators and heroes of the war of independence found small favour, on account of their reforming tendencies". According to some accounts, the painting lay in storage for thirty to forty years before being shown to the public. Its mention in an 1834 Prado inventory shows that the painting remained in the possession of the government or monarchy; much of the royal collection had been transferred to the museum upon its opening in 1819. Théophile Gautier mentioned seeing "a massacre" by Goya during a visit to the museum in 1845, and a visitor in 1858 noted it as well, though both accounts refer to the work as depicting the events of the second of May, perhaps because Dos de Mayo continues to be the Spanish name for the whole episode. In 1867, Goya's biographer Charles Emile Yriarte considered the painting important enough to warrant its own special exhibition, but it was not until 1872 that The Third of May was listed in the Prado's published catalog, under the title Scene of the Third of May 1808. Both the Third and Second of May suffered damage in a road accident while being transported by truck to Valencia for safety during the Spanish Civil War, apparently the only time they have left Madrid. Significant paint losses to the left side of the Second of May have been deliberately left unrepaired until the restoration work to both paintings done in 2008 in time for an exhibition marking the bicentennial of the uprising. In 2009, the Prado selected The Third of May 1808 as one of the museum's fourteen most important paintings, to be displayed in Google Earth at a resolution of 14,000 megapixels. ## Legacy The first paraphrasing of The Third of May was Édouard Manet's Execution of Emperor Maximilian, painted in several versions between 1867 and 1869. In recording a current event to which neither he nor the emerging art of photography was witness, Manet was inspired by Goya's precedent and may have seen the work at the Prado in 1865 before beginning his own paintings, which were too sensitive to be exhibited in France in Manet's lifetime. He undoubtedly saw an 1867 print published by an acquaintance. Art critic Arthur Danto compares Goya's work and Manet's: > The Third of May also depicts an execution, an early event in the so-called Peninsular War between France and Spain. Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Spain in 1808, capturing its royal family and replacing them with his brother, Joseph. The French were as unpopular in Spain as they later were in Mexico, and they encountered a fierce insurrection, which ultimately triumphed. The Third of May execution was an indiscriminate killing of civilians by French soldiers in reprisal for a guerrilla attack the previous day. Goya's painting of the massacre, which shows terrified civilians facing a firing squad, was intended to arouse anger and hatred on the part of Spanish viewers. Goya's is a highly romantic picture of a deeply emotional episode. The Third of May is cited as an influence on Pablo Picasso's 1937 Guernica, which shows the aftermath of the Nazi German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. An exhibition in 2006 at the Prado and the Reina Sofía showed The Third of May, Guernica, and the Execution of the Emperor Maximilian in the same room. Also in the room was Picasso's Massacre in Korea, painted in 1951 during the Korean War—an even more direct reference to the composition of The Third of May. The perpetrators in this painting were intended to be the United States Army or their United Nations allies. Aldous Huxley wrote in 1957 that Goya lacked Rubens' ability to fill the canvas with an ordered composition; but he considered The Third of May a success because Goya "is speaking in his native language, and he is therefore able to express what he wants to say with maximum force and clarity". Kenneth Clark remarked on the painting's radical departure from history painting and its intensity: "With Goya we do not think of the studio or even of the artist at work. We think only of the event. Does this imply that The Third of May is a kind of superior journalism, the record of an incident in which depth of focus is sacrificed to an immediate effect? I am ashamed to say that I once thought so; but the longer I look at this ...the more clearly I recognise that I was mistaken."

Salih ibn Mirdas

Emir of Aleppo

Abu Ali Salih ibn Mirdas (), also known by his laqab (honorific epithet) Asad al-Dawla ('Lion of the State'), was the founder of the Mirdasid dynasty and emir of Aleppo from 1025 until his death in May 1029. At its peak, his emirate (principality) encompassed much of the western Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia), northern Syria and several central Syrian towns. With occasional interruption, Salih's descendants ruled Aleppo for the next five decades. Salih launched his career in 1008, when he seized the Euphrates river fortress of al-Rahba. In 1012, he was imprisoned and tortured by the emir of Aleppo, Mansur ibn Lu'lu'. Two years later he escaped, capturing Mansur in battle and releasing him for numerous concessions, including half of Aleppo's revenues. This cemented Salih as the paramount emir of his tribe, the Banu Kilab, many of whose chieftains had died in Mansur's dungeons. With his Bedouin warriors, Salih captured a string of fortresses along the Euphrates, including Manbij and Raqqa, by 1022. He later formed an alliance with the Banu Kalb and Banu Tayy tribes and supported their struggle against the Fatimids of Egypt. During this tribal rebellion, Salih annexed the central Syrian towns of Homs, Baalbek and Sidon, before conquering Fatimid-held Aleppo in 1025, bringing "to success the plan which guided his [Banu Kilab] forebears for a century", according to historian Thierry Bianquis. Salih established a well-organized administration over his Aleppo-based domains. Militarily, he relied on the Banu Kilab, while entrusting fiscal administration to his local Christian vizier, policing to the aḥdāth (urban militia) under Salim ibn Mustafad, and judicial matters to a Shia Muslim qāḍī (head judge). His rule was officially tolerated by the Fatimids, to whom he paid formal allegiance. His alliance with the Banu Tayy ultimately drew him into conflict with the Fatimid general, Anushtakin al-Dizbari, whose forces killed Salih in battle near Lake Tiberias. Salih was succeeded by his sons Nasr and Thimal. ## Early life and career ### Family and tribe The year of Salih ibn Mirdas' birth is not known. Both of Salih's parents belonged to noble households of the Bedouin (nomadic Arab) tribe of Banu Kilab. His father was Mirdas ibn Idris, from a princely clan of the Kilab, specifically from the Rabi'a ibn Ka'b line of the Abd Allah ibn Abu Bakr branch. Nothing else is known about Mirdas ibn Idris. Salih's mother, Rabab al-Zawqaliyya, belonged to the princely Kilabi clan of Zawqal, which inhabited the environs of Aleppo. Salih had at least three brothers, only one of whom, Kamil, is named in sources, and at least four sons, Nasr (d. 1038), Thimal (d. 1062), Atiyya (d. 1071/72) and the youngest whose name is not known (d. 1029). Salih's family inhabited and controlled the town of Qinnasrin (ancient Chalcis), to the southwest of Aleppo. Like most Aleppine Muslims in the 10th–11th centuries, the Kilab embraced Twelver Shia Islam. Although it is not clear how strongly the tribesmen identified with their faith, Salih's kunya (paedonymic), "Abū ʿAlī" (father of Ali), honored Ali ibn Abi Talib, a central figure in Shia tradition. The Kilab were a major sub-tribe of the Banu Amir and first migrated to Syria from central Arabia during the 7th-century Muslim conquest. They soon became a pillar of the Qaysi tribal faction and established their strongholds in the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia) and the steppes around Aleppo, which thenceforth became their diyār (tribal territory). Through their military strength and consistent ambition to govern and keep order in the territories they inhabited, the Kilab persisted as a powerful force in northern Syria throughout the following centuries. In 932–933, another wave of Kilabi tribesmen moved to the environs of Aleppo as soldiers of an invading Qarmatian army; according to the historian Suhayl Zakkar, the new arrivals "paved the way to the rise and establishment of the Mirdasid dynasty". By then, the Kilab had established itself as the dominant tribal force in northern Syria and played a significant role in all of the uprisings and internecine fighting involving the Hamdanid rulers of Aleppo, between 945 and 1002. ### Emir of al-Rahba Salih is first mentioned in 1008 in relation to the power struggle over the Euphrates fortress town of al-Rahba. The town was strategically situated at the crossroads between Syria and Iraq and frequently contested by local and regional powers. In 1008, Ibn Mihkan, a native of al-Rahba, expelled its Fatimid governor and sought Salih's military backing to uphold his rule. Salih continued to dwell in his tribe's desert encampment, and it is not known what he received in exchange for protecting Ibn Mihkan. A dispute soon arose between Salih and Ibn Mihkan, leading the former to besiege al-Rahba. The hostilities came to an end following an agreement that stipulated Salih's marriage to Ibn Mihkan's daughter and Ibn Mihkan's relocation to Anah, which he would rule in addition to al-Rahba. When Anah's inhabitants revolted against Ibn Mihkan, Salih intervened to reassert his father-in-law's rule. Amid these developments, Ibn Mihkan was assassinated; contemporary chroniclers assume that Salih ordered his death. Salih proceeded to capture al-Rahba and proclaim his allegiance to the Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim. This marked "the first step in Salih's career and from which his ambition probably evolved", according to Zakkar. His capture of al-Rahba most likely boosted his prestige among the Kilab. ### Supreme emir of the Banu Kilab Between 1009 and 1012, the Kilab participated in the struggle for control of Aleppo between the emirate's ruler Mansur ibn Lu'lu' and its former rulers, the Hamdanids, and their regional backers. Twice the Kilab betrayed the Hamdanids and their allies, and in return, demanded from Mansur numerous pastures to breed their flocks and war horses. Instead, Mansur, who viewed the Kilab as a hindrance to his rule, strove to eliminate them by luring the tribesmen into a trap. To that end, on 27 May 1012, he invited them to a feast. Once the tribesmen entered his palace, the gates were locked and Mansur and his ghilmān (slave soldiers or pages; sing. ghulām) attacked them. Several were killed and the rest, including Salih, were imprisoned in the citadel of Aleppo. Afterward, the Kilabi emir Muqallid ibn Za'ida besieged the town of Kafartab to gain leverage with Mansur. This prompted the latter to move the Kilabi prisoners to facilities with better conditions in case of future peace negotiations with Muqallid. Upon hearing of Muqallid's death and his failed siege, Mansur returned the prisoners to the citadel's dungeons, where many among them, including some chieftains, were executed or died from torture or poor conditions. Salih was among those tortured, and was also forced to divorce his wife and cousin Tarud, who was famed for her beauty, so that Mansur could wed her. Zakkar writes that it is not known whether this was meant to humiliate Salih, "an energetic and bold" emir, or to establish marital ties with other elements of the Kilab. Mansur frequently threatened to execute Salih, who upon being informed of these threats, escaped the citadel. According to the reports of medieval chroniclers, Salih managed to cut one of his shackles and make a hole in his cell wall. Then, on the night of 3 July 1014, he jumped from the wall of the citadel with one shackle still attached to his leg, and hid in a drain pipe for the remainder of the night until joining his tribesmen at their encampment in Marj Dabiq. Zakkar questions the truth of this story, and asserts that it is likelier that Salih escaped through bribery or a friendly arrangement with a guard. Salih's escape boosted Kilabi morale, and they assembled to offer him their allegiance. In the following days, the Kilab under Salih besieged Aleppo, but Mansur's forces were able to plunder their camp and capture fifty tribesmen. Buoyed by his victory, Mansur collected his army of ghilmān in Aleppo, along with local ruffians, Christians and Jews, and confronted Salih's forces on the outskirts of Aleppo. The Kilab routed their opponents, killing some 2,000 Aleppines in the process, and captured Mansur. Negotiations between Salih and Mansur's representatives ensued, concluding with an agreement that freed Mansur in return for the release of Salih's brothers, a ransom of 50,000 gold dinars, and the allotment of half of the Emirate of Aleppo's revenues to the Kilab. Salih was able to remarry Tarud and was also given Mansur's daughter to wed. Furthermore, Mansur recognized Salih as the supreme emir of the Kilab, formally investing him with authority and control over his tribesmen. ## Establishment of Mirdasid emirate ### Mesopotamian conquests and struggle for Aleppo Using his new-found power, Salih captured the Euphrates towns of Manbij and Balis, located east and southeast of Aleppo, respectively. With these conquests and his control of al-Rahba, Salih established what would become the Jaziran portion of the Mirdasid emirate. This crossroads region was agriculturally, commercially and strategically valuable, and put Salih in contact with the Byzantines, the Fatimids and the rulers of Iraq. Meanwhile, the agreement between Salih and Mansur collapsed as the latter abandoned most of his promises, including giving his daughter's hand in marriage and according the Kilab their share of Aleppo's revenues. Salih retaliated by besieging Aleppo, while the Kilab and their Bedouin allies plundered the countryside. Mansur appealed for Byzantine intervention and warned the Byzantine emperor, Basil II (r. 976–1025), that if left unchecked, the Bedouin uprising could spread to his territory. Basil dispatched 1,000 Armenian relief troops in response, but withdrew them after Salih informed him of Mansur's treachery and pledged his goodwill to the Byzantines. Basil may have also acquiesced to Salih's activities to avoid provoking Bedouin raids against his territory, which bordered the emirates of both the Kilab and their Numayri kinsmen. The withdrawal of Byzantine troops weakened Mansur's position further and strengthened Salih, who dispatched one of his sons to Constantinople to pay allegiance to Basil. In January 1016, Mansur fled Aleppo after the citadel commander, Fath al-Qal'i, revolted and recognized Salih's emirate and Caliph al-Hakim's suzerainty over Aleppo. According to Aleppine chroniclers, the revolt was coordinated with Salih, who was restored his share of Aleppo's revenues and given custody of the mother, wives and daughters of Mansur; Salih immediately sent the women to join their patriarch, but kept one of the latter's daughters to marry, per their earlier arrangement. Mansur's ouster and the subsequent disorder in northern Syria drove Basil to halt all travel and trade with Syria and Egypt, but Salih persuaded him to exempt Aleppo and the Kilab from these sanctions. To secure his hold over Aleppo, Fath invited Fatimid troops from Afamiyah led by Ali al-Dayf. Al-Hakim bestowed on Salih the laqab of Asad al-Dawla ('Lion of the State') and requested that he cooperate with al-Dayf. Salih opposed the Fatimid presence in Aleppo and proposed an arrangement to Fath giving the latter control of the citadel and the Kilab control of the city. Fath responded favorably, but Aleppo's inhabitants protested the rumored deal, demanding the establishment of Fatimid rule; they enjoyed al-Hakim's tax exemptions and opposed Bedouin governance. Fath was compelled to relocate to Tyre by al-Hakim, who also sent reinforcements to Aleppo. Salih was thus prevented from seizing the city. Nonetheless, Mansur's flight and the instability of Fatimid rule enabled him to strengthen his Jaziran emirate. He established his own administration and tribal court, which as early as 1019, was visited by the Arab poet Ibn Abi Hasina, who became a prominent panegyrist of the Mirdasid dynasty. Meanwhile, in 1017, al-Hakim appointed Aziz al-Dawla, an Armenian ghulām, governor of Aleppo. Aziz established friendly relations with Salih and had the latter's mother live in Aleppo to strengthen ties. There is no mention of Salih's activities during Aziz's five-year reign; according to Zakkar, this indicated that Salih "was satisfied and remained contented" throughout this period. Though Salih was not strong enough to challenge the Fatimids, the Kilab were nonetheless given control of the plains surrounding Aleppo by Aziz. By 1022, Salih had extended his rule to the Euphrates twin towns of Raqqa and al-Rafiqah. In July of that year, Aziz was assassinated, allegedly by his Turkish ghulām, Abu'l-Najm Badr, who briefly succeeded him. This was followed by a succession of governors with short terms, the last being Thu'ban ibn Muhammad and Mawsuf al-Saqlabi as governors of the city and citadel, respectively. ### Formation of the Bedouin alliance Aziz's replacements were challenged by Salih and chaos prevailed in Aleppo. In 1023, Salih entered the Kilab into a military pact with the Banu Tayy of Transjordan and the Banu Kalb of central Syria, both of which opposed direct Fatimid rule. The contemporary historian Yahya al-Antaki relates that the alliance was a renewal of a previous pact made by the same parties in c. 1021, since which they rebelled against and ultimately reconciled with the new Fatimid caliph, az-Zahir (r. 1021–1036), who took power in the aftermath of al-Hakim's disappearance in 1021. The reconciliation unraveled by 1023 owing to the Tayy's conflict with the Fatimid governor of Palestine, Anushtakin al-Dizbari, which prompted the respective chieftains of Tayy and Kalb, Hassan ibn Mufarrij and Sinan ibn Ulayyan, to meet with Salih at the outskirts of Aleppo and renew the alliance. According to the terms of the pact, Syria would be split into three Bedouin-run states, the Kilab under Salih governing Aleppo and northern Syria, the Tayy under its princely Jarrahid household ruling Palestine from al-Ramla, and the Kalb ruling central Syria from Damascus. The combined strength of the three largest tribes in Syria made them a formidable opponent of the Fatimids. A Bedouin alliance of this magnitude and nature had not occurred since the 7th century and was made without consideration to the traditional Qaysi–Yamani rivalry between the tribes; the Tayy and Kalb were Yamani, while the Kilab were Qaysi. Moreover, its formation surprised Syria's population at the time, who were unaccustomed to the spectacle of Bedouin chiefs seeking kingship in the cities rather than nomadic life in the desert fringe. According to Zakkar, "Salih was the outstanding figure among the allies, particularly from a military standpoint", though Hassan apparently managed the allies' communications with the Fatimids. In 1023, Salih and his Kilabi forces headed south and helped the Tayy evict Anushtakin's Fatimid troops from the interior regions of Palestine. Afterward, Salih assisted the Kalbi siege of Damascus. The Tayy and Kalb's revolts in Palestine and Jund Dimashq (Damascus Province), respectively, "supplied the impetus", according to Zakkar, for Salih to move on Aleppo, particularly as the Fatimids' grip on that city had been weakened. While he fought alongside his allies in the south, his kātib (secretary), Sulayman ibn Tawq, captured Ma'arrat Misrin in Aleppo's southern countryside from its Fatimid governor. In November, Salih returned to Aleppo in the belief that its defenders would immediately surrender to him, but this did not occur. He then withdrew and mobilized his tribal warriors and other local Bedouin. ### Conquest of Aleppo In October 1024, Salih's forces, led by Ibn Tawq, advanced against Aleppo and fought in sporadic engagements with the Fatimid troops of governors Thu'ban and Mawsuf. Salih arrived at Aleppo—after having sacked several Syrian coastal districts—with large numbers of Bedouin warriors on 22 November. He besieged the city, first camping outside of Bab al-Jinan, where his demand for the surrender of Ibn Abi Usama, the city's qāḍī (head Islamic judge), and other notables was refused. He then gathered more troops and engaged Aleppo's defenders for over fifty days, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides. On 18 January 1025, the Bab Qinnasrin gate was opened to Salih by Salim ibn al-Mustafad, head of the city's surviving Hamdanid ghilmān; Ibn Mustafad had defected from the Fatimids after a quarrel with Mawsuf, and together with numerous townsmen and other former ghilmān, he welcomed Salih, who granted the inhabitants aman (safe conduct). Afterward, Salih had the towers of the city walls demolished. According to the contemporary Egyptian chronicler al-Musabbihi, this led the local populace to believe Salih was preparing to hand over Aleppo to the Byzantines; fearing this, they fought alongside Fatimid troops and briefly ousted Salih's forces, killing some 250 Kilabi warriors. Zakkar views Salih's destruction of Aleppo's towers as a tactic that would enable an easier reconquest of the city should his troops be ousted. On 23 January, Salih besieged the citadel, where Mawsuf and his troops were ensconced, while Thu'ban and his garrison barricaded themselves in the governor's palace at the foot of the citadel. By 13 March, Salih entered the palace and allowed the townspeople to loot it. As his Bedouin troops were not accustomed to siege warfare, he requested skilled forces from the Byzantine governor of Antioch, Constantine Dalassenos, who dispatched three hundred bowmen to Aleppo; the troops were soon after recalled on the orders of Basil II, who did not support Salih's rebellion. On 5 May, Salih appointed Ibn Mustafad muqaddam al-aḥdāth (commander of the urban militia) and governor of Aleppo, entrusting him and Ibn Tawq with continuing the siege, while Salih left for Palestine to help the Tayy combat a renewed expedition by Anushtakin. The Fatimid garrison's appeal for a truce on 6 June was ignored, prompting their desperate calls for Byzantine assistance; the troops went so far as to hang Christian crosses on the citadel walls and loudly praise Basil II while cursing Caliph az-Zahir. Muslim townsmen reacted to the pro-Byzantine pleas by joining the siege. By 30 June, the citadel was breached and Mawsuf and Thu'ban were arrested. Meanwhile, Salih and the Tayy had fended off Fatimid troops in Palestine. On his way back to Aleppo, Salih captured a string of towns and fortresses, namely Baalbek west of Damascus, Homs and Rafaniyya in central Syria, Sidon on the Mediterranean coast and Hisn Ibn Akkar in the hinterland of Tripoli. These strategically valuable towns gave Salih's emirate an outlet to the sea and control over part of the trade route between Aleppo and Damascus. The fall of Sidon, in particular, alarmed the Fatimids, who had largely prioritized control of Syria's port cities over the inland towns and feared that other ports would subsequently recognize Bedouin rule. In September, Salih entered Aleppo's citadel victoriously. Afterward, he had Mawsuf and Ibn Abi Usama executed, and confiscated the estates of numerous upper class Aleppines. He released Thu'ban in return for financial compensation and allowed the city's dāʿī (chief Isma'ili propagandist) to depart safely. ## Emir of Aleppo Despite his rebellion, Salih paid formal allegiance to the Fatimid Caliphate after conquering Aleppo, and dispatched Ibn Tawq to meet az-Zahir in Cairo; in turn, az-Zahir officially recognized Salih's Mirdasid emirate and sent him numerous robes of honor and presents. There is no information about the Byzantines' relationship with Salih following the conquest of Aleppo, though Basil II refused to back Salih's rebellion when he appealed for support. ### Administration According to the 13th-century historian Ibn al-Amid, "Salih put in order all [the state] matters and adopted the way of justice". Salih organized his emirate along the typical lines of a medieval Islamic state. To that end, he maintained the fiscal administration, appointed a vizier to administer civilian and military affairs, and a Shia qāḍī to oversee judicial matters. He also appointed deputies to govern Sidon, Baalbek, Homs, Rafaniyya and Hisn Ibn Akkar. His vizier was a Christian named Tadhrus ibn al-Hasan, who wielded considerable influence over him, according to the 13th-century Aleppine historian Ibn al-Adim, and accompanied Salih on all of his military campaigns. Aleppine Christians would largely monopolize the post of vizier under later Mirdasid rulers, and members of the community managed significant parts of the emirate's economy. Their major role in the emirate indicated Salih's reliance on local Christian support, the existence of a large Christian minority in Aleppo and an effort to establish friendly ties with the Byzantines. The influence of Tadhrus in securing Christian interests provoked communal tensions in the emirate. Amid Muslim–Christian clashes in Ma'arrat al-Nu'man in 1026/27, Salih imprisoned Muslim notables from the town on charges of razing a winehouse whose Christian owner was accused by a Muslim woman of molesting her. Salih later released them after the intercession of the poet al-Ma'arri, whose brother was among the prisoners. Information is largely absent regarding any major administrative changes Salih made to the Emirate of Aleppo. His only known institutional innovation was the post of shaykh al-dawla (chieftain of the state) or raʾīs al-balad (municipal chief), who came from a prominent leading family and served as Salih's trusted confidant and permanent representative with the people of Aleppo. The post emulated that of the sheikh, who played a secondary role to an emir in a princely Kilabi clan. Salih appointed Ibn Mustafad to the post and utilized the latter's aḥdāth, which consisted of armed young men from the city's lower and middle classes, as a police force. Although they cooperated with Salih, the aḥdāth were still an independent force. Sometime during his reign, Salih also acquired some Turkish ghilmān, though details about them are lacking in the sources. ### Influence over the Bedouin According to historian Thierry Bianquis, Salih had "brought to success the plan which guided his [Kilabi] forebears for a century", and that he ruled with "concern for order and respectability". At its core, Salih's emirate was held together by Kilabi tribal solidarity, and indeed the Kilab were the backbone of the Mirdasid army. Though Salih previously established his paramountcy over the Kilabi chieftains, the Mirdasids were not the only princely clan of the tribe and several emirs from other clans demanded a stake in the emirate. Salih granted each of these emirs an iqṭāʿ (fief; pl. iqṭāʿat), though details about the size or specific holders of the iqṭāʿat are absent in contemporary sources. Bedouin customs were a conspicuous feature of Salih's rule, and he always appeared publicly in the garb of a Bedouin chieftain rather than that of an urban leader. Moreover, Salih preferred to live in his tribal camp in the outskirts of Aleppo rather than the city itself. After his establishment in Aleppo, Salih's status increased among the Bedouin of Syria and the Jazira. He was sometimes referred to by Arabic chroniclers as amīr ʿarab al-Shām (commander of the Bedouin of Syria). The value of this title in Salih's time is unclear, but it "at least indicate[d] the high position of its holder", according to Zakkar. Besides his leadership of the Kilab and influence over the Tayy and Kalb in Syria, Salih's influence also extended to tribes in the Jazira, including the Numayr. When two Numayri emirs lost Edessa to Nasr al-Dawla, the Marwanid emir of Mayyafariqin, they appealed for Salih's intervention; accordingly, he persuaded Nasr to restore Edessa to the Numayr. Furthermore, the Banu Munqidh first emerged as a political force in the Orontes valley under his patronage in 1024/25. At that time, Salih awarded the Munqhidi chieftain Muqallad ibn Nasr ibn Munqidh the feudal lands around Shayzar as an iqṭāʿ for supporting his conquest of Aleppo, but the town of Shayzar itself was controlled by the Byzantines. ## Death and aftermath Between 1025 and 1028, the Fatimids reached an agreement with Salih's Jarrahid/Tayyi allies, allowing them to maintain their foothold in interior Palestine, while Anushtakin was recalled to Cairo. In contrast to the Mirdasids, the Tayy consistently plundered their territory and its inhabitants. Moreover, the Fatimids would not permanently tolerate independent rule in Palestine: as Egypt's gateway to Southwest Asia, this posed a threat to the Caliphate's survival. Meanwhile, as the Fatimids regrouped, the Kalb had been repelled from Damascus, and in 1028, their emir died. He was replaced by his nephew, Rafi ibn Abi'l-Layl, who defected to the Fatimids, thus weakening the tripartite Bedouin alliance. In November 1028, Anushtakin returned to Palestine with a large Fatimid army and more horsemen from the Kalb and Banu Fazara to drive out the Tayy and evict the Mirdasids from central Syria. With the Fatimids and Kalb poised against him, Hassan appealed for Salih's help to maintain their tribes' virtual autonomy throughout Syria against Fatimid encroachment. Accordingly, Salih mobilized his Kilabi forces to reinforce the Tayy in Palestine. The Bedouin leaders first encountered the Fatimid–Kalb army in the vicinity of Gaza, but, unable to halt their advance, they withdrew to the north. On 12 May or 25 May 1029, the two sides fought at al-Uqhuwana, on the eastern shores of Lake Tiberias. For unknown reasons, Hassan and his forces fled in the heat of battle, leaving Salih and his men to face Anushtakin's army alone. The Kilab were decisively defeated and Salih, his youngest son and his vizier were slain. After the battle, Salih's head was sent to Cairo and put on display, while his body was nailed to the gateway of Sidon, a town he had enjoyed residing in. Al-Ma'arri expressed in verse his regret at the manner of Salih's death and the defeat of the Kilab, whom he refers to by one of its branches, the Dibab: > Ṣāliḥ has changed beyond recognition, and the Ḍibāb tribe of Qays are mere lizards (ḍibāb) who fear to be hunted. The Fatimids proceeded to conquer Sidon, Baalbek, Homs, Rafaniyya and Hisn Ibn Akkar from Salih's deputy governors, who all fled. Salih had designated his second eldest son, Thimal, as his successor and left him in charge of Aleppo. His eldest son, Nasr, who fought at al-Uqhuwana, escaped the battle to wrest control of Aleppo. For a brief period, the two sons ruled Aleppo jointly with Nasr controlling the city and Thimal the citadel, until sometime in 1030 when Nasr compelled Thimal to relocate to al-Rahba. In 1038, Anushtakin killed Nasr and seized Aleppo, but Thimal later restored Mirdasid rule in the city, which continued, with occasional interruption, until 1080. The fall of the Mirdasids was followed by the reign of the Uqaylid Arab prince Muslim ibn Quraysh whose death in battle against the Seljuk Turks in 1085 signaled the definitive end of Arab rule in Aleppo, the virtual disappearance of Arab tribes from Syria's political scene and their replacement by Turkish and Kurdish dynasties. ## See also - Sayf al-Dawla, founder of the Hamdanid emirate of Aleppo

Brazilian cruiser Bahia

Brazilian scout cruiser

Bahia was the lead ship of a two-vessel class of cruisers built for Brazil by the British company Armstrong Whitworth. Crewmen mutinied in November 1910 aboard Bahia, Deodoro, Minas Geraes, and São Paulo, beginning the four-day Revolta da Chibata (Revolt of the Lash). Brazil's capital city of Rio de Janeiro was held hostage by the possibility of a naval bombardment, leading the government to give in to the rebel demands which included the abolition of flogging in the navy. During the First World War, Bahia and its sister ship Rio Grande do Sul were assigned to the Divisão Naval em Operações de Guerra (Naval Division in War Operations), the Brazilian Navy's main contribution in that conflict. The squadron was based in Sierra Leone and Dakar and escorted convoys through an area believed to be heavily patrolled by U-boats. Bahia was extensively modernized in the mid-1920s. It received three new Brown–Curtis turbine engines and six new Thornycroft boilers, and it was converted from coal-burning to oil. The refit resulted in a striking aesthetic change, with the exhaust being trunked into three funnels instead of two. The armament was also modified, adding three 20 mm (0.79 in) Madsen autocannons, a 7 mm (0.28 in) Hotchkiss machine gun, and four 533 mm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes. In the 1930s, it served with government forces during multiple revolutions. In the Second World War, Bahia was once again used as a convoy escort, sailing over 100,000 nautical miles (190,000 km; 120,000 mi) in the span of about a year. On 4 July 1945, it was acting as a plane guard for transport aircraft flying from the Atlantic to Pacific theaters of war. Bahia's gunners were firing at a kite for anti-aircraft practice when one aimed too low and hit depth charges stored near the stern of the ship, resulting in a massive explosion that incapacitated the ship and sank it within minutes. Only a few of the crew survived the blast, and fewer still were alive when their rafts were discovered days later. ## Construction and commissioning Bahia was part of a large 1904 naval building program by Brazil. Also planned as part of this were the two Minas Geraes-class dreadnoughts, ten Pará-class destroyers, three submarines and a submarine tender. With a design that borrowed heavily from the British Adventure-class scout cruisers, Bahia's keel was laid on 19 August 1907 in Armstrong Whitworth's Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne yard. Construction took about a year and a half, and she was launched on 20 January 1909 with Madame Altino Correia being the sponsor on behalf of Madame Dr. Araugo Pinho. The process of fitting out pushed its completion date to 2 March 1910, after which it sailed to Brazil and arrived in Recife on 6 May. The new cruiser—the third ship of the Brazilian Navy to honor the state of Bahia—was commissioned into the navy shortly thereafter on 21 May 1910. As a class, Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul were the fastest cruisers in the world when they were commissioned, and the first in the Brazilian Navy to utilize steam turbines for propulsion. ## Mutiny Brazil's economy was suffering from a severe recession at the same time Bahia was commissioned. This economic hardship, the racism prevalent in all branches of the Brazilian armed forces, and the severe discipline enforced on all navy ships, spawned a mutiny known as the Revolta da Chibata (Revolt of the Lash) among sailors on the most powerful ships. Unhappy with the violent treatment they were receiving, black sailors on the dreadnought battleship Minas Geraes began planning an uprising early in 1910, choosing João Cândido Felisberto—an experienced sailor later known as the "Black Admiral"—as their leader. In mid-November, a sailor was sentenced to be flogged in front of his fellow sailors, even though the practice had been banned by law. The punishment was administered and continued even after the sailor fainted, infuriating the nascent mutineers. Although they were not ready and could not revolt immediately, they quickened their preparations and rebelled on 21 November, earlier than originally planned. They killed several officers and the captain of Minas Geraes, while other officers were forced off the ship. The revolt quickly expanded to the battleship São Paulo, the elderly coastal defense ship Deodoro, and Bahia. While joining the revolt, the crew of the scout cruiser murdered one of their officers. During this time, discipline on the rebelling ships was not relaxed; daily drills were conducted and Felisberto ordered all liquor to be thrown overboard. The crews of the torpedo boats remained loyal to the government, and army troops moved to the presidential palace and the coastline, but neither group could stop the mutineers. The fact that many who manned Rio de Janeiro's harbor defenses were sympathetic to the mutineers' cause, coupled with chance that the capital might be bombarded by the mutinous ships, forced the National Congress of Brazil to give in to the rebels' demands. These included the abolition of flogging, improved living conditions, and the granting of amnesty to all mutineers. The government also issued official pardons and a statement of regret; its submission resulted in the rebellion's end on 26 November, when control of the four ships was handed back to the navy. ## First World War In the opening years of the First World War, the Brazilian Navy was sent out to patrol the South Atlantic with French, British and American naval units, although its ships were not supposed to engage any threat outside territorial waters as Brazil was not at war with the Central Powers. The country also tried to ensure that it remained totally neutral; Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul were sent to Santos in August 1914 to enforce neutrality laws when it was reported that the German raider Bremen was lying in wait off that port for British and American merchant ships. Brazil joined the Entente and declared war on the Central Powers on 26 October 1917. On 21 December 1917, the Brazilian Navy—at the behest of the British—formed a small naval force with the intent of sending it to the other side of the Atlantic. On 30 January 1918, Bahia was made the flagship of the newly organized Divisão Naval em Operações de Guerra (Naval Division in War Operations, abbreviated as DNOG), under the command of Rear Admiral Pedro Max Fernando Frontin. The other ships assigned to the squadron were Bahia's sister Rio Grande do Sul, Pará-class destroyers Piauí, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte and Santa Catarina, tender Belmonte, and tugboat Laurindo Pita. The DNOG sailed for the British colony of Sierra Leone on 31 July. Since other allied countries helped with logistics, little was provided by Brazil aside from the ships themselves and the men crewing them. Despite the threat of a U-boat attack, they were forced to stop several times so Belmonte could transfer necessities such as coal and water to the other ships. They reached Freetown safely on 9 August and remained in the port until 23 August when they departed for Dakar. While on this section of the voyage, Bahia, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio Grande do Norte, Belmonte and Laurindo Pita spotted an apparent torpedo heading for Belmonte, but it missed. Rio Grande do Norte then fired several shots and depth-charged what the force believed to be a U-boat. While the official Brazilian history of the ship definitively claims to have sunk a submarine, author Robert Scheina notes that this action was never confirmed, and works published about U-boat losses in the war do not agree. After arriving in Dakar on 26 August, the DNOG was tasked with patrolling a triangle with corners at Dakar, Cape Verde and Gibraltar; the Allies believed that this area was rife with U-boats waiting for convoys to pass through. As such, the Brazilian unit's mission was to patrol for mines laid by German minelaying submarines and to make sure that convoys passing through would be safe. Complications arose when both Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul had problems with their condensers, a matter which was made much worse by the hot, tropical climate in which the ships were serving. In early September, the squadron was struck by the Spanish flu pandemic. The contagion began aboard Bahia, spread to the other ships of the squadron and remained present for seven weeks. At one point, 95% of some of the ships' crews were infected; 103 died overseas, and 250 died in Brazil after returning there. On 3 November, Bahia, three of the four destroyers, and the tugboat were sent to Gibraltar for operations in the Mediterranean Sea. They arrived on 9 or 10 November, escorted by the American destroyer Israel, but the fighting ceased on the 11th when the Armistice with Germany was signed. Sometime in early 1919, Bahia, accompanied by four destroyers, voyaged to Portsmouth, England; they then traveled across the English Channel to Cherbourg, arriving there on 15 February. The commander of the squadron, Admiral Pedro Max Fernando Frontin, met with the Maritime Prefect prior to the commencement of "social events"; these lasted until 23 February, when the ships moved to Toulon and Frontin journeyed overland to Paris. The DNOG was dissolved on 25 August 1919. ## Modernization and inter-war years In 1925–26, Bahia underwent significant modernization. The original five turbines were replaced by three Brown–Curtis turbines, while the original ten boilers were replaced by six Thornycroft oil-burning boilers, which necessitated the addition of a third funnel. The former coal bunkers, along with some of the space freed up by the decrease in boilers, were converted to hold 588,120 litres (155,360 US gal) of oil. These modifications resulted in Bahia's top speed increasing to 28 knots (52 km/h). All of the boats on board were replaced, and three 20 mm (0.79 in) Madsen guns, a 7 mm (0.28 in) Hotchkiss machine gun, and four 533 mm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes were added to give the ship a defense against aircraft and more power against surface ships, respectively. Still, in 1930 The New York Times labeled Bahia and the other warships in Brazil's navy as "obsolete" and noted that nearly all were "older than the ages considered effective by powers signatory to the Washington and London Naval Treaties." On 28 June 1926, the Ludington Daily News reported that Bahia would pay a visit to Philadelphia, accepting an invitation from the United States government to participate in the sesquicentennial celebrations. In mid-1930, Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul—under the command of Heráclito Belford Gomes—escorted Brazil's President-elect Júlio Prestes to the United States. Traveling on board the Brazilian-Lloyd ocean liner Almirante Jacequay, Prestes was returning American then-President-elect Herbert Hoover's visit to Brazil in December 1928. The cruisers USS Trenton and Marblehead met the three ships about 100 miles (160 km) off Sandy Hook and honored Prestes with a 21-gun salute. After spending five hours in the Ambrose Channel due to fog, Prestes traveled on a launch to a pier, during which Bahia rendered one 21-gun salute and Fort Jay offered two. After arriving ashore, he traveled to City Hall before speeding down to Washington, D.C. He stayed in the United States for eight days before departing for France on the White Star Line's . Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul were berthed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for the visit. During the Brazilian Revolution of 1930, Bahia served with Rio Grande do Sul—until that ship defected—and five or six destroyers off the coast of Santa Catarina; they were once again commanded by Belford Gomes. Two years later, when the state of São Paulo rebelled in the Constitutionalist Revolution, Bahia—under the command of Frigate Captain Lucas Alexandre Boiteux—and other vessels blockaded the rebel-held port of Santos. Bahia was under repair from 1934 into 1935. In November 1935, Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul sailed to Natal, the capital of Rio Grande do Norte, to lend support against another rebellion. As part of their mission, they were ordered to sink the steamship Santos on sight, as several escaping leaders of the revolution were on board. From 17 to 22 May 1935, Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul—joined at an unknown point by the Argentine battleships Rivadavia and Moreno, the heavy cruisers Almirante Brown and Veinticinco de Mayo, and five destroyers—escorted São Paulo, with Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas embarked, up the Río de la Plata (River Plate) to Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. Vargas was returning visits from the presidents of Argentina and Uruguay, Agustín Pedro Justo and Gabriel Terra. Vargas and Justo planned to be present at the opening session of the Pan-American Commercial Conference on 26 May, and open a Chaco War peace conference, before São Paulo conveyed Vargas to Montevideo, Uruguay for meetings with Terra. On 2 March 1936, Bahia escorted Veinticinco de Mayo, which had the Argentine Navy Minister Rear Admiral Eleazar Videla embarked, and Almirante Brown in the last part of their journey to Rio de Janeiro. ## Second World War After Brazil's entrance into the Second World War on 21 August 1942, which took effect on 31 August, Bahia was used extensively during the Atlantic campaign for escorts and patrols; sources conflict as to the actual number—either 67 and 15 or 62 and 11. In total, it traveled 101,971 nmi (188,850 km; 117,346 mi) in 358 days, and played a role in shepherding over 700 merchant ships. It and Rio Grande do Sul were labeled by the United States Naval Institute's magazine Proceedings as being "oversized destroyers" that were "relatively slow". Bahia was modernized again twice during the war, in both 1942 and 1944; these modernizations were not as extensive as those of the 1920s. Two of its 47 mm (1.9 in) guns were replaced with 76 mm (3.0 in) L/23 AA guns, its Madsen guns were replaced with seven Oerlikon 20 mm cannons in single mounts, and a director for these guns was installed. Two depth charge tracks were added, improved range-finders were added to the 120 mm (4.7 in) guns, and sonar and radar were fitted, in addition to other minor modifications. The Brazilian Navy's official history of the ship reports these modifications, but does not specify which were undertaken in which year. On 3 June 1943, while Bahia was escorting the convoy BT 12, it located an underwater mine and destroyed it using a 20 mm (0.79 in) Madsen gun. On 10 July, while at , Bahia received a sonar contact and depth-charged what the Brazilian Navy's official history of the ship reports might have been the German submarine , which was sunk later that month in the same area (off Rio de Janeiro) by American and Brazilian aircraft. In November 1944, Bahia joined the American light cruiser Omaha and destroyer escort Gustafson in escorting the troopship General M. C. Meigs, which was carrying the 4th transportation of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force's troops heading to Italy. ### Loss Allied warships were assigned to patrol in the Atlantic as rescue ships at the end of hostilities in the European theater, stationed near routes frequented by military transport aircraft carrying personnel from Europe to the continuing war in the Pacific. Bahia was one such ship, stationed northeast of Brazil around near the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago on 4 July 1945. Crewmen were conducting anti-aircraft target practice, firing the ship's 20 mm guns at a kite that was being towed behind the ship. One of them shot it down, but also accidentally hit the depth charges on the stern; the ship lacked guide rails that would normally prevent the guns from being aimed at the ship. The resulting explosion knocked out all power on the ship and sank it in about three minutes. The survivors of the blast endured four or five days of no food, high temperatures, and full exposure to the sun on their makeshift rafts. The New York Times reported that some were driven mad by these conditions and simply jumped into the water, where they were devoured by sharks. From this point on, sources vary greatly. According to an article in Time magazine, Bahia's loss was not discovered until 8 July, when 22 survivors were picked up by the freighter Balfe. Naval historian Robert Scheina contends that the disaster was revealed when Rio Grande do Sul arrived on station four days after the sinking to take Bahia's place and could not find it. Sources also disagree on the number rescued and final death toll. The official history of the ship gives 36 rescued and 336 dead, and the Navios de Guerra Brasileiros gives 36 and 339. Contemporaneous news articles also published varying numbers; The Evening Independent stated that the ship carried 383 men, though it did not give any more information. The New York Times gave figures of 28 saved and 347 lost, while the St. Petersburg Times gave 32 and 395. Sources do agree that four American sound technicians were killed. Rescued crewmen believed that they had hit a mine which detonated one of the ship's magazines. Vice Admiral Jorge Dodsworth Martins, Brazil's chief of naval intelligence, thought that Bahia could have been mined or torpedoed by , which surrendered under strange circumstances in Mar del Plata, Argentina on 10 July (some two months after Germany's surrender), but the Argentine Naval Ministry stated that it would have been impossible for the submarine to travel from the site of the sinking to Mar del Plata in six days (4–10 July). was also heading to Argentina seeking asylum, and it was also accused of sinking Bahia, but military investigations by the US and Brazilian navies concluded that the cruiser had been sunk due to the gunnery accident. ## See also - USS Indianapolis (CA-35), a U.S. heavy cruiser, also sunk in July 1945, whose survivors endured circumstances similar to Bahia's.

Kelenken

Extinct genus of birds

Kelenken is a genus of phorusrhacid ("terror bird"), an extinct group of large, predatory birds, which lived in what is now Argentina in the middle Miocene about 15 million years ago. The only known specimen was discovered by high school student Guillermo Aguirre-Zabala in Comallo, in the region of Patagonia, and was made the holotype of the new genus and species Kelenken guillermoi in 2007. The genus name references a spirit in Tehuelche mythology, and the specific name honors the discoverer. The holotype consists of one of the most complete skulls known of a large phorusrhacid, as well as a tarsometatarsus lower leg bone and a phalanx toe bone. The discovery of Kelenken clarified the anatomy of large phorusrhacids, as these were previously much less well known. The closest living relatives of the phorusrhacids are the seriemas. Kelenken was found to belong in the subfamily Phorusrhacinae, along with for example Devincenzia. Phorusrhacids were large, flightless birds with long hind limbs, narrow pelvises, proportionally small wings, and huge skulls, with a tall, long, sideways compressed hooked beak. Kelenken is the largest-known phorusrhacid, 10% larger than its largest relatives known previously. At 716 mm (2.3 ft) long, the holotype skull is the largest known of any bird, and has been likened to the size of a horse's skull. The tarsometatarsus leg bone is 437 mm (17 in) long. Kelenken is thought to have been about 3 m (9.8 ft) tall and exceeded 100 kg (220 lb) in weight. Kelenken differed from other phorusrhacids in features such as the length of its beak, in having a supraorbital ossification (a rounded edge above the eye socket) that fits into a socket of the postorbital process, and in having an almost triangular foramen magnum (the large opening at the base of the skull through which the spinal cord enters). Phorusrhacids are thought to have been ground predators or scavengers, and have often been considered apex predators that dominated Cenozoic South America in the absence of placental mammalian predators, though they did co-exist with some large, carnivorous borhyaenid mammals. The long and slender tarsometatarsus of Kelenken suggests that it could run faster than had previously been assumed for large phorusrhacids, and would have been able to chase down small animals. Studies of the related Andalgalornis show that large phorusrhacids had very rigid and stiff skulls; this indicates they may have swallowed small prey whole or targeted larger prey with repetitive strikes with the beak. Kelenken is known from the Collón Curá Formation, and lived during the Colloncuran age of South America, when open environments predominated, which allowed more cursorial (adapted for running) and large animals to occur. The formation has provided fossils of a wide range of mammals, with a few fossils of birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. ## Taxonomy Around 2004, fossils of a phorusrhacid (or "terror bird", a group of large, predatory birds) were discovered by Argentine high school student Guillermo Aguirre-Zabala between two houses, about 100 m (330 ft) from the railroad of Comallo, a small village in the north-west of the Río Negro Province in the Patagonia region of Argentina (coordinates: ). The outcrops where the specimen was discovered belong to the Collón Curá Formation. Aguirre-Zabala prepared the specimen himself, and the discovery led him to shift from studying psychology to studying paleontology and Earth science. The specimen became part of the collection of the Museo Asociación Paleontológica Bariloche in Río Negro, where it was cataloged as specimen BAR 3877-11. Prior to the animal receiving a scientific name, the specimen was reported and discussed by the Argentine paleontologists Luis M. Chiappe and Sara Bertelli in a short 2006 article. In 2007, Bertelli, Chiappe, and Claudia Tambussi made the specimen the holotype of Kelenken guillermoi; the genus name refers to a spirit in the mythology of the Tehuelche people of Patagonia which is represented as a giant bird of prey, and the specific name honors its discoverer. The holotype and only known specimen consists of a nearly complete skull which is somewhat crushed from top to bottom, with most of the eye sockets, skull roof, braincase, and left quadrate bone preserved, while most of the palatal bones behind the eye sockets are missing. The specimen also includes an associated left tarsometatarsus (lower leg bone of birds), a small upper portion of a foot phalanx bone (toe bone), and some indeterminate fragments. The describers concluded these bones belonged to a single specimen due to being collected together (and with no other fossils being present), because their general preservation (such as color and texture) was similar, and because they were morphologically consistent with belonging to a large phorusrhacid. The specimen possessed the most complete skull of a large phorusrhacid known at the time. Previously, such skulls were known only from the fragmentary Devincenzia and Phorusrhacos. The skull of the latter disintegrated during collection (leaving only the tip of the beak), which hampered comparison between phorusrhacid taxa of different sizes, until the discovery of Kelenken. ### Evolution In their 2007 description, Bertelli and colleagues classified Kelenken as a member of the family Phorusrhacidae, based on its enormous size, combined with its sideways compressed, strongly hooked beak (or rostrum, the part of the jaws that formed the beak), and convex culmen (the top of the upper beak). Five phorusrhacid subfamilies were recognized at the time (Brontornithinae, Phorusrhacinae, Patagornithinae, Mesembriornithinae, and Psilopterinae), though their validity had not then been confirmed through cladistic analysis, and the describers found Kelenken most similar to taxa that had traditionally been considered phorusrhacines. Features shared with phorusrhacines include that the hind part of the skull is low and compressed from top to bottom, a wide occipital table, a blunt postorbital process, and a tarsometatarsus that is similar to that of Titanis in that the supratrochlear surface of the lower end is flat. Further comparison was hampered by the lack of anatomical information about phorusrhacines. The Brazilian paleontologist Herculano Alvarenga and colleagues published a phylogenetic analysis of Phorusrhacidae in 2011 that found Kelenken and Devincenzia to be sister taxa, each other's closest relatives. While the analysis supported there being five subfamilies, the resulting cladogram did not separate Brontornithinae, Phorusrhacinae, and Patagornithinae. In their 2015 description of Llallawavis, the Argentinian paleontologist Federico J. Degrange and colleagues performed a phylogenetic analysis of Phorusrhacidae, wherein they found Phorusrhacinae to be polyphyletic (an unnatural grouping). The following cladogram shows the position of Kelenken following the 2015 analysis: During the early Cenozoic, after the extinction of the non-bird dinosaurs, mammals underwent an evolutionary diversification, and some bird groups around the world developed a tendency towards gigantism; this included the Gastornithidae, the Dromornithidae, the Palaeognathae, and the Phorusrhacidae. Phorusrhacids are an extinct group within Cariamiformes, the only living members of which are the two species of seriemas in the family Cariamidae. While they are the most speciose group within Cariamiformes, the interrelationships between phorusrhacids are unclear due to the incompleteness of their remains. Phorusrhacids were present in South America from the Paleocene (when the continent was an isolated island) and survived until the Pleistocene. They also appeared in North America at the end of the Pliocene, during the Great American Biotic Interchange, and while fossils from Europe have been assigned to the group, their classification is disputed. It is unclear where the group originated; both cariamids and phorusrhacids may have arisen in South America, or arrived from elsewhere when southern continents were closer together or when sea levels were lower. Kelenken itself lived during the middle Miocene, about 15 million years ago. Since phorusrhacids survived until the Pleistocene, they appear to have been more successful than for example the South American metatherian thylacosmilid predators (which disappeared in the Pliocene), and it is possible that they competed ecologically with placental predators that entered from North America in the Pleistocene. ## Description Phorusrhacids were large, flightless birds with long hind limbs, narrow pelvises, proportionally small wings, and huge skulls, with a tall, long, sideways compressed hooked beak. Kelenken is the largest known phorusrhacid, about 10% larger than the largest phorusrhacids previously known, such as Phorusrhacos. The holotype skull is about 716 mm (2.3 ft) long from the tip of the beak to the center of the sagittal nuchal crest at the upper back of the head (a size likened to the size of a horse's skull), making it the largest skull of any known bird. The hind end of the skull is 312 mm (12 in) wide. The tarsometatarsus leg bone is 437 mm (17 in) long. The head height was up to 3 m (9.8 ft), while modern seriemas reach 90 cm (3.0 ft) in height. While the weight of Kelenken has not been specifically estimated, it is thought to have exceeded 100 kg (220 lb). ### Skull Prior to the discovery of Kelenken, the skulls of incompletely known large phorusrhacids were reconstructed as scaled up versions of those of smaller, more complete relatives like Psilopterus and Patagornis, as exemplified by a frequently reproduced 1895 sketch of the destroyed skull of the large Phorusrhacos, which was itself based on that of Patagornis. These reconstructions highlighted their assumed very tall beaks, round, high eye sockets, and vaulted braincases, but Kelenken demonstrated the significant difference between the skulls of large and small members of the group. The holotype skull is very massive, and triangular when viewed from above, with the hind portion compressed from top to bottom. The upper beak is very long, exceeding half the total length of the skull, unlike in Mesembriornis and Patagornis, and is longer than that of Phorusrhacos. The ratio between the upper beak and the skull of Kelenken is 0.56, based on the distance between the bony nostril and the front tip. In spite of the crushing from top to bottom, the upper beak is high and very robust, though apparently not as high as in patagornithines, such as Patagornis, Andrewsornis, and Andalgalornis. The front end of the premaxilla (the frontmost bone of the upper jaw) prominently projects as a sharp, downturned hook. Such a strong downwards projection resembles most closely the condition seen in large to medium sized phorusrhacids such as Phorusrhacos, Patagornis, Andrewsornis, and Andalgalornis, rather than the weaker projections of the smaller psilopterines. The underside of the upper beak's front portion forms a pair of prominent ridges that are each separated by a groove from the tomium, or sharp edge of the beak. These ridges are also separated from a broader central portion of the premaxilla by a longitudinal groove (the rostral premaxillar canal). Patagornis had a similar morphology on the front part of the palate. Much of the upper beak's side is scarred by small, irregular pits, which functioned as nerve exits. The hindmost two thirds of the upper beak are excavated by a prominent furrow, which runs parallel to the margin of the tomium. The nostrils are small, rectangular, and are located in the upper hind corner of the upper beak as in patagornithines (the size and location of the nostrils is unknown in the larger phorusrhacines and brontornithines). The nostrils appear to be longer from front to back than high, though this may be exaggerated by crushing, and their hind margin is formed by the maxillary process of the nasal bone (a projection from the nasals towards the maxilla, the main bone of the upper jaw). Whether the nostrils are connected to each other at the middle (lacking a septum as in other phorusrhacids) is not discernible. The quadrangular shape of the antorbital fenestra (an opening in front of the eye socket) is clear despite it being crushed somewhat on both sides. The front border of this opening is approximately level with the hind margin of the nostril, and its lower margin is straight when viewed from the left side. Robust lacrimal bones form the hind margins of the antorbital fenestrae, and these bones were recessed in relation to the jugal bar (that formed the lower edge of the eye socket) and the outer side margin of each frontal bone (main bones of the forehead). The antorbital fenestra is proportionally smaller than that of Patagornis. While the shape of the eye sockets may be slightly affected by compression from top to bottom, it is likely they were low, almost rectangular in shape, with a concave upper margin and a slightly convex lower border. The upper part of the eye socket is delineated by a thick, rounded edge (a supraorbital ossification), the hind part of which appears to overhang downward as seen from the side. In Patagornis, a similar structure has been suggested to be a process of the lacrimal bone, and while the connection between these is not clear in Kelenken, this structure was probably also an extension of the lacrimal. The supraorbital ossification fits within a socket formed by a part of the frontal bone that forms the postorbital process, a configuration unknown in other phorusrhacids. The lower margin of the eye socket is formed by a robust jugal bar which is very tall (larger than that of Devincenzia), and flat from side to side. The jugal bone is about four times taller than thick by the lower center of the eyesocket, and its height is greater than in other phorusrhacids. The frontal bones appear to have been flat on their upper side. The area where the frontals would have contacted the premaxillae is damaged so that their sutures (joints between them) cannot be identified, but the sutures between the frontals and the nasals and parietals are fully fused. This fusion makes it difficult to identify how these bones were part of the skull roof, but the blunt, robust postorbital processes were probably mainly formed by the frontals. On their lower sides, each frontal forms a large depression where a jaw muscle attached. The postorbital process is separated narrowly from a robust zygomatic process, and these two projections enclose a narrow temporal fossa (opening at the temple). The postorbital process contains scars left by massive jaw muscles, parts of which invaded most of the skull roof at the level of the parietal bones. There is a well developed depression behind the zygomatic process, along the side of the squamosal bone, which corresponds to a jaw closing muscle. The subtemporal fossa further behind is broad and its back is defined by a blunt, sidewards extension of the nuchal crest. The maxillae form an extensive palate, with the side margins being almost parallel for most of the upper beak's length, and the palate becomes wider from the front back to the region of the eye sockets. Like in Patagornis, these bones are separated at the midline by a distinct, longitudinal depression running much of their length, and along the back half of the palate, this depression is flanked by portions of the maxillae. The side margin at the back of the maxilla has a sutured contact with the jugal which is well-defined, similar to Patagornis. The part of the skull roof behind the eye sockets is flat and scarred by the development of the temporal musculature. The occipital table is very wide, like in Devicenzia, and low, which gives it a rectangular appearance when viewed from behind. The occipital condyle (the rounded prominence at the back of the head which contacted with the first neck vertebra) is round with a vertical groove that originates on its upper surface, and reaches almost to the center of the condyle. The foramen magnum (the large opening at the base of the skull through which the spinal cord enters) is almost triangular, uniquely for this genus, and has a blunt upper apex, and it is slightly smaller than the condyle. Above the foramen magnum is a crest-like prominence, vertically extending from the edge of the foramen to the transverse nuchal crest. A fossa (shallow depression) under the condyle is not visible, differing from Patagornis and Devicenzia, whose fossae are distinct. ### Leg bone The shaft of the tarsometatarsus is somewhat slender, with an almost rectangular mid-section, similar to Phorusrhacos. The upper two thirds of its upper surface are concave, while the lower third is flatter. The tarsometatarsus has cotylae (two cup-like cavities at the upper end of the shaft) that are almost oval and deeply concave. The lateral cotyla on the outer side is smaller than the medial cotyla on the inner side, and is slightly below it. The intercotylar eminence between the cotylae is well developed and robust, as in other phorusrhacids. Unique to this genus, there is a round tubercle on the medioplantar corner of the lateral cotyla, lower in height than the intercotylar eminence. The middle of the shaft of the tarsometatarsus is irregularly quadrangular, which is different from that of brontornithines, which are rectangular and very wide. The trochlea of the third metatarsal (the "knuckles" of the tarsometatarsus which articulated with the upper part of the toe phalanges) is much bigger than the two other trochlea (second and fourth), and projects much further down, and the fourth trochlea is larger than the second. The fourth trochlea is irregularly quadrangular, which contrasts with the rectangular trochlea of Devicenzia. The distal vascular foramen, an opening on the lower front side of the tarsometatarsus, has a centralized position, above the upper ends of the third and fourth trochleae. ## Paleobiology ### Feeding and diet Phorusrhacids are thought to have been ground predators or scavengers, and have often been considered apex predators that dominated Cenozoic South America in the absence of placental mammalian predators, though they did co-exist with some large, carnivorous borhyaenid mammals. Earlier hypotheses of phorusrhacid feeding ecology were mainly inferred from them having large skulls with hooked beaks rather than through detailed hypotheses and biomechanical studies, and such studies of their running and predatory adaptations were only conducted from the beginning of the 21st century. Alvarenga and Elizabeth Höfling made some general remarks about phorusrhacid habits in a 2003 article. They were flightless, as evidenced by the proportional size of their wings and body mass, and wing-size was more reduced in larger members of the group. These researchers pointed out that the narrowing of the pelvis, upper maxilla, and thorax could have been adaptations to enable the birds to search for and take smaller animals in tall plant growth or broken terrain. The large expansions above the eyes formed by the lacrimal bones (similar to what is seen in modern hawks) would have protected the eyes against the sun, and enabled keen eyesight, which indicates they hunted by sight in open, sunlit areas, and not shaded forests. #### Leg function In 2005, Rudemar Ernesto Blanco and Washington W. Jones examined the strength of the tibiotarsus (shin bone) of phorusrhacids to determine their speed, but conceded that such estimates can be unreliable even for extant animals. While the tibiotarsal strength of Patagornis and an indeterminate large phorusrhacine suggested a speed of 14 m/s (50 km/h; 31 mph), and that of Mesembriornis suggested 27 m/s (97 km/h; 60 mph), the latter is greater than that of a modern ostrich, approaching that of a cheetah, 29 m/s (100 km/h; 65 mph). They found these estimates unlikely due to the large body size of these birds, and instead suggested the strength could have been used to break the long bones of medium-sized mammals, the size, for example, of a saiga or Thomson's gazelle. This strength could be used for accessing the marrow inside the bones, or by using the legs as kicking weapons (like some modern ground birds do), consistent with the large, curved, and sideways compressed claws known in some phorusrhacids. They also suggested future studies could examine whether they could have used their beaks and claws against well-armored mammals such as armadillos and glyptodonts. According to Chiappe and Bertelli in 2006, the discovery of Kelenken shed doubt on the traditional idea that the size and agility of phorusrhacids correlated, with the larger members of the group being more bulky and less adapted for running. The long and slender tarsometatarsus of Kelenken instead shows that this bird may have been much swifter than the smaller, more heavyset and slow Brontornis. In a 2006 news article about the discovery, Chiappe stated that while Kelenken may not have been as swift as an ostrich, it could clearly run faster than had previously been assumed for large phorusrhacids, based on the long, slender leg-bones, superficially similar to those of the modern, flightless rhea. The article suggested that Kelenken would have been able to chase down small mammals and reptiles. In another 2006 news article, Chiappe stated that Kelenken would have been as quick as a greyhound, and that while there were other large predators in South America at the time, they were limited in numbers and not as fast and agile as the phorusrhacids, and the many grazing mammals would have provided ample prey. Chiappe stated that phorusrhacids crudely resembled earlier predatory dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus, in having gigantic heads, very small forelimbs, and very long legs, and thereby had the same kind of meat-eater adaptations. #### Skull and neck function A 2010 study by Degrange and colleagues of the medium-sized phorusrhacid Andalgalornis, based on Finite Element Analysis using CT scans, estimated its bite force and stress distribution in its skull. They found its bite force to be 133 newtons at the bill tip, and showed it had lost a large degree of intracranial immobility (mobility of skull bones in relation to each other), as was also the case for other large phorusrhacids such as Kelenken. These researchers interpreted this loss as an adaptation for enhanced rigidity of the skull; compared to the modern red-legged seriema and white-tailed eagle, the skull of the phorusrhacid showed relatively high stress under sideways loadings, but low stress where force was applied up and down, and in simulations of "pullback". Due to the relative weakness of the skull at the sides and midline, these researchers considered it unlikely that Andalgalornis engaged in potentially risky behavior that involved using its beak to subdue large, struggling prey. Instead, they suggested that it either fed on smaller prey that could be killed and consumed more safely, by for example swallowing it whole, or that when targeting large prey, it used a series of well-targeted repetitive strikes with the beak, in a "attack-and-retreat" strategy. Struggling prey could also be restrained with the feet, despite the lack of sharp talons. A 2012 follow-up study by Tambussi and colleagues analyzed the flexibility of the neck of Andalgalornis, based on the morphology of its neck vertebrae, finding the neck to be divided into three sections. By manually manipulating the vertebrae, they concluded that the neck musculature and skeleton of Andalgalornis was adapted to carrying a large head, and for helping it rise from a maximum extension after a downwards strike, and the researchers assumed the same would be true for other large, big-headed phorusrhacids. A 2020 study of phorusrhacid skull morphology by Degrange found that there were two main morphotypes within the group, derived from a seriema-like ancestor. These were the "Psilopterine Skull Type", which was plesiomorphic (more similar to the ancestral type), and the "Terror Bird Skull Type", which included Kelenken and other large members, that was more specialized, with more rigid and stiff skulls. Despite the differences, studies have shown the two types handled prey similarly, while the more rigid skulls and resulting larger bite force of the "Terror Bird" type would have been an adaptation to handling larger prey. ## Paleoenvironment Kelenken was discovered in pyroclastic (rocks ejected by volcanic eruptions) outcrops belonging to the Collón Curá Formation in the southeastern corner of Comallo, Patagonia, an area covered in whitish tuffs. The area's stratigraphy had only been preliminarily studied at the time, and the age of the sediments had not been adequately determined, but compared with other fossil beds of the South American land mammal age and radioisotopic dating from different areas of the Collón Curá Formation, it is estimated to date to the Colloncuran age of the middle Miocene, about 15 million years ago. The formation was accumulated in a broken foreland system characterized by several basins that were disconnected from each other. The formation is composed mainly of volcaniclastic limestones and sandstones that were accumulated in continental environments ranging from alluvial (deposited by running water) to lacustrine (deposited by lakes). The Collón Curá Formation and the Colloncuran age of South America represent a time when more open environments with reduced plant covering predominated, similar to semi-arid and temperate to warm, dry woodlands or bushlands. The open environment allowed more cursorial (adapted for running) and large animals to occur, contrasting with the earlier conditions during the late Early Miocene, with its well-developed forests with tree-dwelling animals. Forests would then have been restricted to valleys of the cordillera mountain ranges, with few tree-dwelling species. This change happened progressively during the earlier Friasian stage. The transition towards more arid landscapes would have happened simultaneously with climate changes that corresponded to the Middle Miocene Climate Transition, a global cooling event which had a drying effect on continents. The Collón Curá Formation of Argentina has provided a wide assemblage of mammals, including at least 24 taxa such as the xenarthrans Megathericulus, Prepotherium, Prozaedyus, and Paraeucinepeltus, the notoungulate Protypotherium, the astrapothere Astrapotherium, the sparassodonts Patagosmilus and Cladosictis, the marsupial Abderites, the primate Proteropithecia, and rodents such as Maruchito, Protacaremys, Neoreomys, and Prolagostomus. In addition to the mammals that characterize sediments of this age, there are also a few fossils of birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish.

The Goldfinch (painting)

Painting by Carel Fabritius

The Goldfinch () is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age artist Carel Fabritius of a life-sized chained goldfinch. Signed and dated 1654, it is now in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands. The work is a trompe-l'œil oil on panel measuring 33.5 by 22.8 centimetres (13.2 in × 9.0 in) that was once part of a larger structure, perhaps a window jamb or a protective cover. It is possible that the painting was in its creator's workshop in Delft at the time of the gunpowder explosion that killed him and destroyed much of the city. A common and colourful bird with a pleasant song, the goldfinch was a popular pet, and could be taught simple tricks including lifting a thimble-sized bucket of water. It was reputedly a bringer of good health, and was used in Italian Renaissance painting as a symbol of Christian redemption and the Passion of Jesus. The Goldfinch is unusual for the Dutch Golden Age painting period in the simplicity of its composition and use of illusionary techniques. Following the death of its creator, it was lost for more than two centuries before its rediscovery in Brussels. ## Description The Goldfinch is an oil painting on panel measuring 33.5 by 22.8 centimetres (13.2 in × 9.0 in), now in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands. Details of its physical structure emerged when it was restored in 2003. Because the lead-based paint limited the effectiveness of traditional X-rays and infrared, chief conservator Jorgen Wadum used a CT scanner to see what was under the paint layer. The panel on which it is painted is 8–10 millimetres (0.31–0.39 in) thick, which is atypically deep for a small painting, and indicates that it may have formerly been part of a larger piece of wood. Evidence for this is the remains of a wooden pin, suggesting the original boards had been joined with dowels and glue. Before it was framed, the painting had a 2-centimetre (0.79 in) black border onto which a gilded frame was later fixed with ten equally spaced nails. The nails did not reach the back of the panel, so there is no evidence of a backing to the picture. The frame was subsequently removed, leaving only a residual line of a greenish copper compound. Fabritius then extended the white background pigment to the right edge, repainted his signature, and added the lower perch. Finally, the remaining black edges were overpainted with white. The back of the panel has four nail holes and six other holes near the top, suggesting two different methods of suspension of the panel at various times. The art historian Linda Stone-Ferrier has suggested that the panel may have been either attached to the inner jamb of a window or have been a hinged protective cover for another wall-mounted painting. During conservation, it was realised that the surface of the painting had numerous small dents that must have been formed when the paint was still not fully dried, since there was no cracking. It is possible that the slight damage was caused by the explosion that killed its creator. The restoration removed the old yellow varnish and showed the original tones, described by the art critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger in 1859 as "pale wall" (mur blême) and "bright colour" (lumineuse couleur). ## The subject The painting shows a life-size European goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) on top of a feeder—a blue container with a lid, enclosed by two wooden half-rings fixed to the wall. The bird is perched on the upper ring, to which its leg is attached by a fine chain. The painting is signed and dated "C fabritivs 1654" at the bottom. The goldfinch is a widespread and common seed-eating bird in Europe, North Africa, and western and central Asia. As a colourful species with a pleasant twittering song, and an associated belief that it brought health and good fortune, it had been domesticated for at least 2,000 years. Pliny recorded that it could be taught to do tricks, and in the 17th century, it became fashionable to train goldfinches to draw water from a bowl with a miniature bucket on a chain. The Dutch title of the painting is the bird's nickname, puttertje, which refers to this custom and is a diminutive equivalent to "draw-water", an old Norfolk name for the bird. The goldfinch frequently appears in paintings, not just for its colourful appearance but also for its symbolic meanings. Pliny associated the bird with fertility, and the presence of a giant goldfinch next to a naked couple in The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych by the earlier Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch perhaps refers to this belief. Nearly 500 Renaissance religious paintings, mainly by Italian artists, show the bird, including Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna Litta (1490–1491), Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch (1506) and Piero della Francesca's Nativity (1470–1475) In Medieval Christianity, the goldfinch's association with health symbolises the Redemption, and its habit of feeding on the seeds of spiky thistles, together with its red face, presaged the crucifixion of Jesus, where the bird supposedly became splattered with blood while attempting to remove the crown of thorns. Many of these devotional paintings were created in the middle of the fourteenth century while the Black Death pandemic gripped Europe. The symbolism persisted long after the time of Fabritius. A much later example of the goldfinch as a symbol of redemption is Hogarth's 1742 painting The Graham Children. Thomas, the youngest, had died by the time the painting was completed. ### The goldfinch in art ## Style The Goldfinch is a trompe-l'œil painting which uses artistic techniques to create the illusion of depth, notably through foreshortening of the head, but also by highlights on the rings and the bird's foot, and strong shadows on the plastered wall. Bold strokes of bright colours above and lighter touches of duller colours below also accentuate the visual effect. The viewpoint seems to be from slightly below the bird, suggesting it was intended to be mounted in an elevated position. The lack of a frame initially also suggests the painting may have been mounted to look realistic, and may have been part of a larger assemblage of illusionary paintings. Stone-Ferrier's supposition that it may at one time have been part of a window jamb relies in part on the painting giving the illusion of a real perched bird to passers-by, which is consistent with a raised location. She notes the importance of windows as picture settings during the Dutch Golden Age and the use of perspective boxes to create realistic interiors. Fabritius used a perspective box to create depth in other paintings, including his A View of Delft. Fabritius used lead white paint as the base for the cream plaster of the walls, contrasting with the tan shadow of the bird. The art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon considered that the blend of colours in the diffuse shadow foreshadowed some of the techniques of the nineteenth-century French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists. The trompe-l'œil technique has been known since ancient times, Pliny telling the story of Zeuxis painting grapes so real that birds flew down to peck at them. Jacopo de' Barbari's A Sparrowhawk is a Renaissance example of a painting that seemed intended to be mounted to create an illusion of reality to people passing the window. Although several of Fabritius's contemporaries, including his master Rembrandt, used similar effects, the depiction of a single bird is a minimalist version of the genre, and the simplicity of the design combined with the perspective technique in The Goldfinch is unique among paintings of the Dutch Golden Age. Fabritius had previously experimented with trompe-l'œil with the realistic nail that appears to be protruding from his 1649 Portrait of Abraham de Potter. The art historian Wilhelm Martin (1876–1954) considered that The Goldfinch could only be compared with the Still-Life with Partridge and Gauntlets painted by Jacopo de' Barbari in 1504, more than a hundred years earlier. The bird itself was created with broad brush strokes, with only minor later corrections to its outline, while details, including the chain, were added with more precision. Fabritius's style differs from Rembrandt's typical chiaroscuro in his use of cool daylight, complex perspective, and dark figures against a light background, although he retains some of his master's techniques such as using the handle end of the brush to scratch lines through thick paint. ## Artist Carel Pietersz Fabritius was born in 1622 in Middenbeemster in the Dutch Republic. Initially he worked as a carpenter. His father and his brothers Barent and Johannes were painters and, although not formally trained in art, Fabritius's ability gained him a place at Rembrandt's studio in Amsterdam. The move to Amsterdam took place in 1641, the same year Fabritius married his first wife, who came from a well-to-do family. Following her death in 1643, he moved back to Middenbeemster, where he lived until the early 1650s, then to Delft, where he joined the Guild of Saint Luke in 1652. Fabritius died aged 32, caught in the explosion of the Delft gunpowder magazine on October 12, 1654, which killed at least 100 people and destroyed a quarter of the city, including his studio and many of his paintings. Few of his works are known to have survived. According to his biographer, Arnold Houbraken, Fabritius's student Mattias Spoors and church deacon Simon Decker also died as a result of the explosion. The Goldfinch was painted in the year Fabritius died. Fabritius's works were well regarded by his contemporaries, and his style influenced other notable Dutch painters of the period, including Pieter de Hooch, Emanuel de Witte and Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer, who also lived in Delft, in particular used similar pale, worn walls lit by bright sunlight, and it has been suggested that he was Fabritius's student, although there is no real evidence for this claim. ## Provenance The Goldfinch was lost and unknown for more than two centuries before it first came to light in 1859. Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who had helped to restore the reputation of Vermeer, found it in the collection of former Dutch army officer and collector Chevalier Joseph-Guillaume-Jean Camberlyn in Brussels. It was subsequently given to Thoré-Bürger by the chevalier's heirs in 1865, and he in turn bequeathed it with the rest of his collection to his companion, Apolline Lacroix, in 1869, three years after its first public exhibition in Paris in 1866. It was sold to Étienne-François Haro, a painter, restorer and art dealer, for 5,500 francs at the Hôtel Drouot auction house in Paris on 5 December 1892, and later purchased for the Mauritshuis by its curator and art collector Abraham Bredius for 6,200 francs at the sale of the Émile Martinet collection, also at Hôtel Drouot, on 27 February 1896. As well as The Goldfinch, Martinet's collection included works attributed to other renowned artists such as Rembrandt, Goya, Steen, and Corot, and La Pythonisse, a work tentatively attributed to Fabritius's brother, Barent. The painting is now in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague. ## Cultural references and exhibitions The Goldfinch plays a central role in the 2013 eponymous novel by American author Donna Tartt. The novel's protagonist, 13-year-old Theodore "Theo" Decker, survives a terrorist bombing at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in which his mother dies. He takes the Fabritius painting, part of a Dutch Golden Age exhibition, with him as he escapes the building, and much of the rest of the book is based around his attempts to hide the picture, its theft and eventual return. The book won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and was a commercial success with sales reaching nearly 1.5 million soon after the award. The book's cover is itself a trompe l'oeil, the painting visible through an illusionary tear in the paper. In reality, the painting has never been displayed in the Metropolitan Museum, although coincidentally an exhibition including The Goldfinch opened at New York's Frick Collection on the day of the novel's publication. An estimated 200,000–235,000 people attended the Frick exhibition, despite freezing temperatures, and 13,000 people joined the museum, quadrupling its subscription base. The 2013–2014 Frick exhibition was part of a world tour of selected Golden Age paintings from the Mauritshuis during its two-year closure for a £25M renovation of the gallery, with previous showings in Tokyo, Kobe, San Francisco, Atlanta and New York, and finishing with a visit to Bologna. The Tokyo exhibition was attended by a million people, making it the most visited such event of the year. Prior to the publicity from the release of Tartt's novel, Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring had typically been highlighted as the main attraction of the exhibition. Tartt's book was adapted as a 2019 film produced by Warner Bros and Amazon Studios, directed by John Crowley, and starring Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman. Other cultural references to The Goldfinch include American artist Helen Frankenthaler's 1960 abstract expressionist interpretation of the 1654 painting titled the Fabritius Bird, and US poet Morri Creech's 2010 poem "Goldfinch", which includes the line "You stare / from a modest trompe l'oeil heaven we don't share". The Goldfinch was one of eight Mauritshuis masterpieces depicted on a set of €1.00 stamps issued in 2014 by the Dutch postal service, PostNL, to mark the reopening of the museum. It also featured in a 2004 set of stamps showing works by Fabritius. ## Selected bibliography - - -

HMS Illustrious (87)

1940 Illustrious-class aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy

HMS Illustrious was the lead ship of her class of aircraft carriers built for the Royal Navy before World War II. Her first assignment after completion and working up was with the Mediterranean Fleet, in which her aircraft's most notable achievement was sinking one Italian battleship and badly damaging two others during the Battle of Taranto in late 1940. Two months later the carrier was crippled by German dive bombers and was repaired in the United States. After sustaining damage on the voyage home in late 1941 by a collision with her sister ship Formidable, Illustrious was sent to the Indian Ocean in early 1942 to support the invasion of Vichy French Madagascar (Operation Ironclad). After returning home in early 1943, the ship was given a lengthy refit and briefly assigned to the Home Fleet. She was transferred to Force H for the Battle of Salerno in mid-1943 and then rejoined the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean at the beginning of 1944. Her aircraft attacked several targets in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies over the following year before Illustrious was transferred to the newly formed British Pacific Fleet (BPF). The carrier participated in the early stages of the Battle of Okinawa until mechanical defects arising from accumulated battle damage became so severe she was ordered home early for repairs in May 1945. The war ended while she was in the dockyard and the Admiralty decided to modify her for use as the Home Fleet's trials and training carrier. In this role she conducted the deck-landing trials for most of the British post-war naval aircraft in the early 1950s. She was occasionally used to ferry troops and aircraft to and from foreign deployments as well as participating in exercises. In 1951, she helped to transport troops to quell rioting in Cyprus after the collapse of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936. She was paid off in early 1955 and sold for scrap in late 1956. ## Background and description The Royal Navy's 1936 Naval Programme authorised the construction of two aircraft carriers. Admiral Sir Reginald Henderson, Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Navy, was determined not to simply modify the previous unarmoured Ark Royal design. He believed that carriers could not be successfully defended by their own aircraft without some form of early-warning system. Lacking that, there was nothing to prevent land-based aircraft from attacking them, especially in confined waters like the North Sea and Mediterranean. This meant that the ship had to be capable of remaining in action after sustaining damage and that her fragile aircraft had to be protected entirely from damage. The only way to do this was to completely armour the hangar in which the aircraft would shelter, but putting so much weight high in the ship allowed only a single-storey hangar due to stability concerns. This halved the aircraft capacity compared with the older unarmoured carriers, exchanging offensive potential for defensive survivability. Illustrious was 740 feet (225.6 m) in length overall and 710 feet (216.4 m) at the waterline. Her beam was 95 feet 9 inches (29.2 m) at the waterline and she had a draught of 28 feet 10 inches (8.8 m) at deep load. She displaced 23,000 long tons (23,369 t) at standard load as completed. Her complement was approximately 1,299 officers and enlisted men upon completion in 1940. By 1944, she was severely overcrowded with a total crew of 1,997. After post-war modifications to convert her into a trials carrier, her complement was reduced to 1,090 officers and enlisted men. The ship had three Parsons geared steam turbines, each driving one shaft, using steam supplied by six Admiralty 3-drum boilers. The turbines were designed to produce a total of 111,000 shp (83,000 kW), enough to give a maximum speed of 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph) at deep load. On 24 May 1940 Illustrious ran her sea trials and her engines reached 113,700 shp (84,800 kW). Her exact speeds were not recorded as she had her paravanes streamed, but it was estimated that she could have made about 31 knots (57 km/h; 36 mph) under full power. She carried a maximum of 4,850 long tons (4,930 t) of fuel oil which gave her a range of 10,700 nautical miles (19,800 km; 12,300 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) or 10,400 nmi (19,300 km; 12,000 mi) at 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph) or 6,300 nmi (11,700 km; 7,200 mi) at 25 knots (46 km/h; 29 mph). The 753-foot (229.5 m) armoured flight deck had a usable length of 620 feet (189.0 m), due to prominent "round-downs" at each end designed to reduce the effects of air turbulence caused by the carrier's structure on aircraft taking-off and landing, and a maximum width of 95 feet (29.0 m). A single hydraulic aircraft catapult was fitted on the forward part of the flight deck. The ship was equipped with two unarmoured lifts on the centreline, each of which measured 45 by 22 feet (13.7 by 6.7 m). The hangar was 456 feet (139.0 m) long and had a maximum width of 62 feet (18.9 m). It had a height of 16 feet (4.9 m) which allowed storage of Lend-Lease Vought F4U Corsair fighters once their wingtips were clipped. The hangar was designed to accommodate 36 aircraft, for which 50,650 imperial gallons (230,300 L; 60,830 US gal) of aviation spirit was provided. ### Armament, electronics and protection The main armament of the Illustrious class consisted of sixteen quick-firing (QF) 4.5-inch (110 mm) dual-purpose guns in eight twin-gun turrets, four in sponsons on each side of the hull. The roofs of the gun turrets protruded above the level of the flight deck to allow them to fire across the deck at high elevations. Her light antiaircraft defences included six octuple mounts for QF 2-pounder ("pom-pom") antiaircraft guns, two each fore and aft of her island, and two in sponsons on the port side of the hull. The completion of Illustrious was delayed two months to fit her with a Type 79Z early-warning radar; she was the first aircraft carrier in the world to be fitted with radar before completion. This version of the radar had separate transmitting and receiving antennas which required a new mainmast to be added to the aft end of the island to mount the transmitter. The Illustrious-class ships had a flight deck protected by 3 inches (76 mm) of armour and the internal sides and ends of the hangars were 4.5 inches (114 mm) thick. The hangar deck itself was 2.5 inches (64 mm) thick and extended the full width of the ship to meet the top of the 4.5-inch waterline armour belt. The underwater defence system was a layered system of liquid- and air-filled compartments backed by a 1.5-inch (38 mm) splinter bulkhead. ### Wartime modifications While under repair in 1941, Illustrious's rear "round-down" was flattened to increase the usable length of the flight deck to 670 feet (204.2 m). This increased her aircraft complement to 47 aircraft by use of a permanent deck park of 6 aircraft. Her light AA armament was also augmented by the addition of 10 Oerlikon 20 mm autocannon in single mounts. In addition the two steel fire curtains in the hangar were replaced by asbestos ones. After her return to the UK later that year, her Type 79Z radar was replaced by a Type 281 system and a Type 285 gunnery radar was mounted on one of the main fire-control directors. The additional crewmen, maintenance personnel and facilities needed to support these aircraft, weapons and sensors increased her complement to 1,326. During her 1943 refits, the flight deck was modified to extend its usable length to 740 feet (225.6 m), and "outriggers" were probably added at this time. These were U-shaped beams that extended from the side of the flight deck into which aircraft tailwheels were placed. The aircraft were pushed back until the main wheels were near the edge of the flight deck to allow more aircraft to be stored on the deck. Twin Oerlikon mounts replaced most of the single mounts. Other twin mounts were added so that by May she had a total of eighteen twin and two single mounts. The Type 281 radar was replaced by an upgraded Type 281M, and a single-antenna Type 79M was added. Type 282 gunnery radars were added for each of the "pom-pom" directors, and the rest of the main directors were fitted with Type 285 radars. A Type 272 target-indicator radar was mounted above her bridge. These changes increased her aircraft capacity to 57 and caused her crew to grow to 1,831. A year later, in preparation for her service against the Japanese in the Pacific, one starboard octuple "pom-pom" mount, directly abaft the island, was replaced by two 40 mm Bofors AA guns. Two more twin Oerlikon mounts were added, and her boilers were retubed. At this time her complement was 1,997 officers and enlisted men. By 1945, accumulated wear-and-tear as well as undiagnosed shock damage to Illustrious's machinery caused severe vibrations in her centre propeller shaft at high speeds. In an effort to cure the problem, the propeller was removed, and the shaft was locked in place in February; these radical measures succeeded in reducing, but not eliminating, the vibrations and reduced the ship's speed to about 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph). ### Post-war modifications Illustrious had been badly damaged underwater by a bomb in April 1945, and was ordered home for repairs the following month. She began permanent repairs in June that were scheduled to last four months. The RN planned to fit her out as a flagship, remove her aft 4.5-inch guns in exchange for increased accommodation, and replace some of her Oerlikons with single two-pounder AA guns, but the end of the war in August caused the RN to reassess its needs. In September, it decided that the Illustrious would become the trials and training carrier for the Home Fleet and her repairs were changed into a lengthy refit that lasted until June 1946. Her complement was sharply reduced by her change in role and she retained her aft 4.5-inch guns. Her light AA armament now consisted of six octuple "pom-pom" mountings, eighteen single Oerlikons, and seventeen single and two twin Bofors mounts. The flight deck was extended forward, which increased her overall length to 748 feet 6 inches (228.1 m). The high-angle director atop the island was replaced with an American SM-1 fighter-direction radar, a Type 293M target-indication system was added, and the Type 281M was replaced with a prototype Type 960 early-warning radar. The sum total of the changes since her commissioning increased her full-load displacement by 2,520 long tons (2,560 t). In 1947 she carried five 8-barrel pom-poms, 17 Bofors and 16 Oerlikons. A five-bladed propeller was installed on her centre shaft although the increasing wear on her outer shafts later partially negated the reduction in vibration. While running trials in 1948, after another refit, she reached a maximum speed of 29 knots (54 km/h; 33 mph) from 110,680 shp (82,530 kW). Two years later, she made 29.2 knots from 111,450 shp (83,110 kW). At some point after 1948, the ship's light AA armament was reduced to two twin and nineteen single 40 mm guns and six Oerlikons. ## Construction and service Illustrious, the fourth ship of her name, was ordered as part of the 1936 Naval Programme from Vickers-Armstrongs on 13 April 1937. Construction was delayed by slow deliveries of her armour plates because the industry had been crippled by a lack of orders over the last 15 years as a result of the Washington Naval Treaty. As a consequence, her flight-deck armour had to be ordered from Vítkovice Mining and Iron Corporation in Czechoslovakia. She was laid down at their Barrow-in-Furness shipyard two weeks later as yard number 732 and launched on 5 April 1939. She was christened by Lady Henderson, wife of the recently retired Third Sea Lord. Illustrious was then towed to Buccleuch Dock for fitting out and Captain Denis Boyd was appointed to command her on 29 January 1940. She was commissioned on 16 April 1940 and, excluding her armament, she cost £2,295,000 to build. While Illustrious was being moved in preparation for her acceptance trials on 24 April, the tugboat Poolgarth capsized with the loss of three crewmen. The carrier conducted preliminary flying trials in the Firth of Clyde with six Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers that had been craned aboard earlier. In early June, she loaded the personnel from 806, 815, and 819 Squadrons at Devonport Royal Dockyard; 806 Squadron was equipped with Blackburn Skua dive bombers and Fairey Fulmar fighters, and the latter two squadrons were equipped with Swordfish. She began working up off Plymouth, but the German conquest of France made this too risky, and Illustrious sailed for Bermuda later in the month to continue working up. This was complete by 23 July, when she arrived in the Clyde and flew off her aircraft. The ship was docked in Clydeside for a minor refit the following day; she arrived in Scapa Flow on 15 August, and became the flagship of Rear Admiral Lumley Lyster. Her squadrons flew back aboard, and she sailed for the Mediterranean on 22 August with 15 Fulmars and 18 Swordfish aboard. After refuelling in Gibraltar, Illustrious and the battleship Valiant were escorted into the Mediterranean by Force H as part of Operation Hats, during which her Fulmars shot down five Italian bombers and her AA guns shot down two more. Now escorted by the bulk of the Mediterranean Fleet, eight of her Swordfish, together with some from the carrier Eagle, attacked the Italian seaplane base at Rhodes on the morning of 3 September. A few days after the Italian invasion of Egypt, Illustrious flew off 15 Swordfish during the moonlit night of 16/17 September to attack the port of Benghazi. Aircraft from 819 Squadron laid six mines in the harbour entrance while those from 815 Squadron sank the destroyer Borea and two freighters totalling 10,192 gross register tons (GRT). The destroyer Aquilone later struck one of the mines and sank. During the return voyage to Alexandria, the Italian submarine Corallo made an unsuccessful attack on the British ships. While escorting a convoy to Malta on 29 September, the carrier's Fulmars broke up attacks by Italian high-level and torpedo bombers, shooting down one for the loss of one fighter. While returning from another convoy escort mission, the Swordfish of Illustrious and Eagle attacked the Italian airfield on the island of Leros on the evening of 13/14 October. ### Battle of Taranto Upon his arrival in the Mediterranean, Lyster proposed a carrier airstrike on the Italian fleet at its base in Taranto, as the Royal Navy had been planning since the Abyssinia Crisis of 1935, and Admiral Andrew Cunningham, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, approved the idea by 22 September 1940. The attack, with both available carriers, was originally planned for 21 October, the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, but a hangar fire aboard Illustrious on 18 October forced its postponement until 11 November when the next favourable phase of the moon occurred. The fire destroyed three Swordfish and heavily damaged two others, but they were replaced by aircraft from Eagle, whose contaminated fuel tanks prevented her from participating in the attack. Repairs were completed before the end of the month, and she escorted a convoy to Greece, during which her Fulmars shot down one shadowing CANT Z.506B floatplane. She sailed from Alexandria on 6 November, escorted by the battleships Warspite, Malaya, and Valiant, two light cruisers, and 13 destroyers, to provide air cover for another convoy to Malta. At this time her air group was reinforced by several of Eagle's Gloster Sea Gladiators supplementing the fighters of 806 Squadron as well as torpedo bombers from 813 and 824 Squadrons. The former aircraft were carried "...as a permanent deck park..." and they shot down a CANT Z.501 seaplane two days later. Later that day seven Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 medium bombers were intercepted by three Fulmars, which claimed to have shot down one bomber and damaged another. In reality, they heavily damaged three of the Italian aircraft. A Z.501 searching for the fleet was shot down on 10 November by a Fulmar and another on the 11th. A flight of nine SM.79s was intercepted later that day and the Fulmars claimed to have damaged one of the bombers, although it actually failed to return to base. Three additional Fulmars had been flown aboard from Ark Royal a few days earlier, when both carriers were near Malta; that brought its strength up to 15 Fulmars, 24 Swordfish, and two to four Sea Gladiators. Three Swordfish crashed shortly after take-off on 10 and 11 November, probably due to fuel contamination, and the maintenance crewmen spent all day laboriously draining all the fuel tanks and refilling them with clean petrol. This left only 21 aircraft available for the attack. Now augmented by reinforcements from the UK, the Mediterranean Fleet detached Illustrious, four cruisers, and four destroyers to a point 170 miles (270 km) south-east of Taranto. The first wave of a dozen aircraft, all that the ship could launch at one time, flew off by 20:40 and the second wave of nine by 21:34. Six aircraft in each airstrike were armed with torpedoes and the remainder with bombs or flares or both to supplement the three-quarter moon. The Royal Air Force (RAF) had positioned a Short Sunderland flying boat off the harbour to search for any movement to or from the port and this was detected at 17:55 by acoustic locators and again at 20:40, alerting the defenders. The noise of the on-coming first airstrike was heard at 22:25 and the anti-aircraft guns defending the port opened fire shortly afterwards, as did those on the ships in the harbour. The torpedo-carrying aircraft of the first wave scored one hit on the battleship Conte di Cavour and two on the recently completed battleship Littorio while the two flare droppers bombed the oil storage depot with little effect. The four aircraft loaded with bombs set one hangar in the seaplane base on fire and hit the destroyer Libeccio with one bomb that failed to detonate. The destroyer Fulmine, or Conte di Cavour, shot down the aircraft that put a torpedo into the latter ship, but the remaining aircraft returned to Illustrious. One torpedo-carrying aircraft of the second wave was forced to return when its long-range external fuel tank fell off, but the others hit the Littorio once more and the Duilio was hit once when they attacked beginning at 23:55. The two flare droppers also bombed the oil storage depot with minimal effect, and one bomb penetrated through the hull of the heavy cruiser Trento without detonating. One torpedo bomber was shot down, but the other aircraft returned. A follow on airstrike was planned for the next night based on the pessimistic assessments of the aircrews, but it was cancelled due to bad weather. Reconnaissance photos taken by the R.A.F. showed three battleships with their decks awash and surrounded by pools of oil. The two airstrikes had changed the balance of power in the Mediterranean by rendering the Conte di Cavour unavailable for the rest of the war, and badly damaging the Littorio and the Duilio. ### Subsequent operations in the Mediterranean While en route to Alexandria the ship's Fulmars engaged four CANT Z.506Bs, claiming three shot down and the fourth damaged, although Italian records indicate the loss of only two aircraft on 12 November. Two weeks later, 15 Swordfish attacked Italian positions on Leros, losing one Swordfish. While off Malta two days later, six of the carrier's fighters engaged an equal number of Fiat CR.42 Falco biplane fighters, shooting down one and damaging two others. One Fulmar was lightly damaged during the battle. On the night of 16/17 December, 11 Swordfish bombed Rhodes and the island of Stampalia with little effect. Four days later Illustrious's aircraft attacked two convoys near the Kerkennah Islands and sank two merchant ships totalling 7,437 GRT. On the morning of 22 December, 13 Swordfish attacked Tripoli harbour, starting fires and hitting warehouses multiple times. The ship arrived back at Alexandria two days later. On 7 January 1941, Illustrious set sail to provide air cover for convoys to Piraeus, Greece and Malta as part of Operation Excess. For this operation, her fighters were reinforced by a detachment of three Fulmars from 805 Squadron. During the morning of 10 January, her Swordfish attacked an Italian convoy without significant effect. Later that morning three of the five Fulmars on Combat Air Patrol (CAP) engaged three SM.79s at low altitude, claiming one shot down. One Fulmar was damaged and forced to return to the carrier, while the other two exhausted their ammunition and fuel during the combat and landed at Hal Far airfield on Malta. The remaining pair engaged a pair of torpedo-carrying SM.79s, damaging one badly enough that it crashed upon landing. They were low on ammunition and out of position, as they chased the Italian aircraft over 50 miles (80 km) from Illustrious. The carrier launched four replacements at 12:35, just when 24–36 Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers of the First Group/Dive Bomber Wing 1 (I. Gruppe/Sturzkampfgeschwader (StG) 1) and the Second Group/Dive Bomber Wing 2 (II. Gruppe/StG 2) began their attack, led by Paul-Werner Hozzel. Another pair were attempting to take off when the first 250-or-500-kilogram (550 or 1,100 lb) bomb struck just forward of the aft lift, destroying the Fulmar whose engine had failed to start and detonating high in the lift well; the other aircraft took off and engaged the Stukas as they pulled out of their dive. The ship was hit five more times in this attack, one of which penetrated the un-armoured aft lift and detonated beneath it, destroying it and the surrounding structure. One bomb struck and destroyed the starboard forward "pom-pom" mount closest to the island, while another passed through the forwardmost port "pom-pom" mount and failed to detonate, although it did start a fire. One bomb penetrated the outer edge of the forward port flight deck and detonated about 10 feet (3.0 m) above the water, riddling the adjacent hull structure with holes which caused flooding in some compartments and starting a fire. The most damaging hit was a large bomb that penetrated through the deck armour forward of the aft lift and detonated 10 feet above the hangar deck. The explosion started a severe fire, destroyed the rear fire sprinkler system, bent the forward lift like a hoop and shredded the fire curtains into lethal splinters. It also blew a hole in the hangar deck, damaging areas three decks below. The Stukas also near-missed Illustrious with two bombs, which caused minor damage and flooding. The multiple hits at the aft end of the carrier knocked out her steering gear, although it was soon repaired. Another attack by 13 Ju 87s at 13:20 hit the ship once more in the aft lift well, which again knocked out her steering and reduced her speed to 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph). This attack was intercepted by six of the ship's Fulmars which had rearmed and refuelled ashore after they had dropped their bombs, but only two of the dive bombers were damaged before the Fulmars ran out of ammunition. The carrier, steering only by using her engines, was attacked several more times before she entered Grand Harbour's breakwater at 21:04, still on fire. The attacks killed 126 officers and men and wounded 91. Nine Swordfish and five Fulmars were destroyed during the attack. One additional Swordfish, piloted by Lieutenant Charles Lamb, was attempting to land when the bombs began to strike and was forced to ditch when it ran out of fuel; the crew was rescued by the destroyer Juno. The British fighters claimed to have shot down five Ju 87s, with the fleet's anti-aircraft fire claiming three others. Germans records show the loss of three Stukas, with another forced to make an emergency landing. While her steering was being repaired in Malta, the Illustrious was bombed again on 16 January by 17 Junkers Ju 88 medium bombers and 44 Stukas. The pilots of 806 Squadron claimed to have shot down two of the former and possibly damaged another pair, but a 500 kg bomb penetrated her flight deck aft of the rear lift and detonated in the captain's day cabin; several other bombs nearly hit the ship but only caused minor damage. Two days later, one of three Fulmars that intercepted an Axis air raid on the Maltese airfields was shot down with no survivors. Only one Fulmar was serviceable on 19 January, when the carrier was attacked several times and it was shot down. Illustrious was not struck during these attacks but was near-missed several times and the resulting shock waves from their detonations dislodged enough hull plating to cause an immediate 5-degree list, cracked the cast-iron foundations of her port turbine, and damaged other machinery. The naval historian J. D. Brown noted that "There is no doubt that the armoured deck saved her from destruction; no other carrier took anything like this level of punishment and survived." Without aircraft aboard, she sailed to Alexandria on 23 January escorted by four destroyers, for temporary repairs that lasted until 10 March. Boyd was promoted to rear admiral on 18 February and relieved Lyster as Rear Admiral Aircraft Carriers. He transferred his flag to Formidable when she arrived at Alexandria on 10 March, just before Illustrious sailed for Port Said to begin her transit of the Suez Canal. The Germans had laid mines in the canal earlier. Clearing the mines and the ships sunk by them was a slow process and Illustrious did not reach Suez Bay until 20 March. The ship then sailed for Durban, South Africa, to have the extent of her underwater damage assessed in the drydock there. She reached Durban on 4 April and remained there for two weeks. The ship ultimately arrived at the Norfolk Navy Yard in the United States on 12 May for permanent repairs. Some important modifications were made to her flight deck arrangements, including the installation of a new aft lift and modification of the catapult for use by American-built aircraft. Her light antiaircraft armament was also augmented during the refit. Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten relieved her acting captain on 12 August, although he did not arrive aboard her until 28 August. He was almost immediately sent on a speaking tour to influence American public opinion, until he was recalled home in October and relieved by Captain A. G. Talbot on 1 October. The work was completed in November and Illustrious departed on 25 October, for trials off Jamaica and to load the dozen Swordfish of 810 and 829 Squadrons. She returned to Norfolk on 9 December, to rendezvous with Formidable, which had also been repaired there, and the carriers sailed for home three days later. On the night of 15/16 December, Illustrious collided with Formidable in a moderate storm. Neither ship was seriously damaged, but Illustrious had to reduce speed to shore up sprung bulkheads in the bow and conduct temporary repairs to the forward flight deck. She arrived at Greenock on 21 December and permanent repairs were made from 30 December to late February 1942 at Cammell Laird's shipyard in Birkenhead. While working up her air group in March, reinforced by the Grumman Martlet fighters (the British name of the F4F Wildcat) of 881 and 882 Squadrons, she conducted trials of a "hooked" Supermarine Spitfire fighter, the prototype of the Seafire. ### In the Indian Ocean The conquest of British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies in early 1942 opened the door for Japanese advances into the Indian Ocean. The Vichy French-controlled island of Madagascar stood astride the line of communication between India and the UK and the British were worried that the French would accede to occupation of the island as they had to the Japanese occupation of French Indochina in 1940. Preventing this required a preemptive invasion of Diego Suarez scheduled for May 1942. Illustrious had her work up cut short on 19 March to prepare to join the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean and participate in the attack. She sailed four days later, having embarked twenty-one Swordfish, nine Martlet IIs of 881 Squadron and six Martlet Is of 882 Squadron, and two Fulmar fighters prior to escorting a troop convoy carrying some of the men allocated for the assault. A hangar fire broke out on 2 April that destroyed 11 aircraft and killed one crewman, but failed to cause any serious damage to the ship. Repairs were made in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where her destroyed aircraft were replaced and augmented by twelve additional Martlet II fighters from HMS Archer, while two Martlet I aircraft were, in turn, transferred to Archer, bringing Illustrious's total aircraft complement to 47. After her stay at Freetown, Illustrious proceeded to Durban; during the voyage her staff also fitted ASV radar to the replacement Swordfish. One Martlet I was fitted with folding wings. Illustrious's aircraft were tasked to attack French naval units and shipping and to defend the invasion fleet, while her half-sister Indomitable provided air support for the ground forces. For the operation the carrier's air group numbered 25 Martlets, 1 night-fighting Fulmar and 21 Swordfish, and was consequently forced to have a permanent deck park of 5 Martlets and one Swordfish. Before dawn on 5 May, she launched 18 Swordfish together with 8 Martlets. The first flight of 6 Swordfish, carrying torpedoes, unsuccessfully attacked the aviso D'Entrecasteaux, but sank the armed merchant cruiser . The second flight, carrying depth charges, sank the submarine Bévéziers while the third flight dropped leaflets over the defenders before attacking an artillery battery and D'Entrecasteaux. One aircraft of the third flight was forced to make an emergency landing and its crew was captured by the French. Later in the day, D'Entrecasteaux attempted to put to sea, but she was successfully bombed by an 829 Squadron Swordfish and deliberately run aground to avoid sinking. Three other Swordfish completed her destruction. The next morning, Martlets from 881 Squadron intercepted three Potez 63.11 reconnaissance bombers, shooting down two and forcing the other to retreat, while Swordfish dropped dummy parachutists as a diversion. One patrolling Swordfish sank the submarine Le Héros and another spotted for ships bombarding French defences. On the morning of 7 May, Martlets from 881 Squadron intercepted three Morane-Saulnier M.S.406 fighters on a reconnaissance mission. All three were shot down for the loss of one Martlet. In addition to the other losses enumerated, 882 Squadron's Fulmar was shot down while providing ground support. Illustrious''' aircraft flew 209 sorties and suffered six deck landing crashes, including four by Martlets. She was then formally assigned to the Eastern Fleet and, after a short refit in Durban, sailed to Colombo, Ceylon, and became the flagship of the Rear Admiral Aircraft Carriers, Eastern Fleet, Denis Boyd, her former captain. At the beginning of August, the ship participated in Operation Stab, a decoy invasion of the Andaman Islands to distract the Japanese when the Americans were beginning the Guadalcanal Campaign in the South Pacific. Captain Robert Cunliffe relieved Talbott on 22 August. On 10 September the carrier covered the amphibious landing that opened operations Stream, Line and Jane, the occupation of the remainder of Madagascar, and the landing at Tamatave eight days later, but no significant resistance was encountered and her aircraft were not needed. For this operation she had aboard six Fulmars of 806 Squadron, 23 Martlets of 881 Squadron and 18 Swordfish of 810 and 829 Squadrons. ### European waters After a farewell visit from the Eastern Fleet commander, Admiral Sir James Somerville on 12 January 1943, Illustrious sailed for home the next day. She flew off her aircraft to Gibraltar on 31 January and continued on to the Clyde where she arrived five days later. She conducted deck-landing trials for prototypes of the Blackburn Firebrand and Fairey Firefly fighters, as well as the Fairey Barracuda dive/torpedo bomber from 8 to 10 February. On 26 February she began a refit at Birkenhead that lasted until 7 June during which her flight deck was extended, new radars were installed, her light anti-aircraft armament was augmented, and two new arrestor wires were fitted aft of the rear lift which increased her effective landing area. While conducting her post-refit trials, she also conducted flying trials for Martlet Vs and Barracudas. Both sets of trials were completed by 18 July, by which time the Illustrious had joined the Home Fleet. On 26 July, she sortied for the Norwegian Sea as part of Operation Governor, together with the battleship Anson, the American battleship Alabama, and the light carrier Unicorn, an attempt to fool the Germans into thinking that Sicily was not the only objective for an Allied invasion. 810 Squadron was the only unit retained from her previous air group and it had been re-equipped with Barracudas during her refit. Her fighter complement was augmented by 878 and 890 Squadrons, each with 10 Martlet Vs, and 894 Squadron with 10 Seafire IICs. These latter aircraft lacked folding wings and could not fit on the lifts. The British ships were spotted by Blohm & Voss BV 138 flying boats and 890 Squadron shot down two of them before the fleet returned to Scapa Flow on 29 July. She transferred to Greenock at the end of the month and sailed on 5 August to provide air cover for the ocean liner as she conveyed Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the Quebec Conference. Once the convoy was out of range of German aircraft, the Illustrious left the convoy and arrived back at Greenock on 8 August. Together with the Unicorn, she sailed for the Mediterranean on 13 August to prepare for the landings at Salerno (Operation Avalanche), reaching Malta a week later. Her air group was reinforced at this time by four more Martlets each for 878 and 890 Squadrons. She was assigned to Force H for the operation which was tasked to protect the amphibious force from attack by the Italian Fleet and provide air cover for the carriers supporting the assault force. The Italians made no effort to attack the Allied forces, and the most noteworthy thing that any of her aircraft did was when one of 890 Squadron's Martlets escorted a surrendering Italian aircraft to Sicily. Before the Illustrious steamed for Malta she transferred six Seafires to the Unicorn to replace some of the latter's aircraft wrecked in deck-landing accidents. Four of these then flew ashore to conduct operations until they rejoined Illustrious on 14 September at Malta. She then returned to Britain on 18 October for a quick refit at Birkenhead that included further improvements to the flight deck and the reinforcement of her light anti-aircraft armament. She embarked the Barracudas of 810 and 847 Squadrons of No. 21 Naval Torpedo-Bomber Reconnaissance Wing on 27 November before beginning her work up three days later. No. 15 Naval Fighter Wing with the Vought Corsairs of 1830 and 1833 Squadrons were still training ashore and flew aboard before the work up was finished on 27 December. ### Return to the Indian Ocean Illustrious departed Britain on 30 December and arrived in Trincomalee, Ceylon, on 28 January 1944. She spent most of the next several months training although she participated in several sorties with the Eastern Fleet searching for Japanese warships in the Bay of Bengal and near the coast of Sumatra. The fleet departed Trincomalee on 21 March to rendezvous with the American carrier Saratoga in preparation for combined operations against the Japanese facilities in the Dutch East Indies and the Andaman Islands. The first operation carried out by both carriers was an airstrike on the small naval base at Sabang at the northern tip of Sumatra (Operation Cockpit). The carrier's air group consisted of 21 Barracudas and 28 Corsairs for the operation; Illustrious launched 17 of the former escorted by 13 of the latter on the morning of 19 April. The American bombers attacked the shipping in the harbour while the British aircraft attacked the shore installations. The oil storage tanks were destroyed and the port facilities badly damaged by the Barracudas. There was no aerial opposition and the fighters claimed to have destroyed 24 aircraft on the ground. All British aircraft returned safely although one American fighter was forced to ditch during the return home. The Saratoga was ordered to depart for home for a refit by 19 May and Somerville wanted to mount one more attack as she was leaving the Indian Ocean. He chose the naval base and oil refinery at Surabaya, Java (Operation Transom), and the distance from the newly renamed East Indies Fleet's base at Ceylon required refuelling at Exmouth Gulf on the western coast of Australia before the attack. The necessity to attack from the south, across the full width of Java, meant that the target was outside the Barracuda's range and 810 and 847 Squadrons were replaced by the 18 Grumman Avengers of 832 and 845 Squadrons for the mission. Early on the morning of 17 May, the ship launched all 18 Avengers, escorted by 16 Corsairs. One Avenger crashed on take-off and an American Avenger was shot down over the target; only one small ship was sunk, and little damage was done to the refinery. The Saratoga and her escorts separated after refuelling again in Exmouth Gulf and the East Indies Fleet was back in Trincomalee on 27 May where No. 21 Wing reembarked. On 10 June, the Illustrious and the escort carrier Atheling put to sea to simulate another airstrike on Sabang as a means of distracting the Japanese while the Americans were attacking airfields in the Mariana Islands and preparing to invade the island of Saipan. For the planned attack on Port Blair in the Andaman Islands in mid-June her air group was reinforced by the 14 Corsairs of 1837 Squadron; six Barracudas from No. 21 TBR Wing were landed to make room for the additional fighters. On 21 June, the ship launched 15 Barracudas and 23 Corsairs against the airfield and harbour of Port Blair. Two of the Barracudas were forced to return with engine trouble before the attack began and another was shot down over the target. In addition, one Corsair was forced to ditch; the pilot was rescued by a destroyer. Bad weather degraded the accuracy of the Barracudas and little damage was inflicted aside from a few aircraft destroyed on the ground and a few small craft sunk in the harbour. With over 50 aircraft airborne at one point, the British realised that a single deck accident might result in the loss of every aircraft in the air because there was no other carrier available to land aboard. The carrier and her escorts arrived back at Trincomalee on 23 June where 847 Squadron was merged into 810 Squadron a week later. Her sister ships, the Indomitable and the Victorious arrived at the end of June although only the latter's pilots were combat-ready. Captain Charles Lambe was appointed as the new captain of the Illustrious on 21 May, but he could not join his new ship until 9 July. Somerville decided to attack Sabang again (Operation Crimson), although the ships of the East Indies Fleet would bombard the port while the fighters from the Illustrious and the Victorious spotted for them and protected the fleet. As the Barracudas were needed only for anti-submarine patrols, the former embarked only nine while the latter ship flew off all her Barracudas. On the early morning of 25 July, Illustrious launched 22 Corsairs for CAP and to observe the naval gunfire and take photos for post-attack damage assessments. The bombardment was very effective, sinking two small freighters, and severely damaging the oil storage and port facilities. One Corsair was shot down by Japanese flak although the pilot was rescued after ditching. As the fleet was withdrawing, Illustrious's CAP intercepted and shot down a Nakajima Ki-43 (codenamed "Oscar") fighter and a Mitsubishi Ki-21 "Sally" medium bomber on reconnaissance missions. Later in the day her Corsairs intercepted 10 Ki-43s and shot down two of them while driving off the remainder. After arriving in Trincomalee, 1837 Squadron was transferred to the Victorious. On 30 July, she sailed for Durban to begin a refit that lasted from 15 August to 10 October and arrived back at Trincomalee on 1 November. 810 Squadron and its Barracudas were transferred off the ship the next day and were later replaced by the Avengers of 854 Squadron. For the next six weeks she carried out an intensive flying regime in preparation for the next operations against the Japanese together with the other carriers of the fleet. On 22 November she was assigned to the newly formed British Pacific Fleet (BPF), commanded by Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser. She was assigned to the 1st Aircraft Carrier Squadron (1st ACS), commanded by Rear Admiral Sir Philip Vian when he arrived at Colombo aboard the carrier Indefatigable. A week later, Illustrious and Indomitable sortied to attack an oil refinery at Pangkalan Brandan, Sumatra (Operation Outflank); the former's airgroup now consisted of 36 Corsairs of 1830 and 1833 Squadrons and 21 Avengers of 857 Squadron. When the aircraft approached the target on the morning of 20 December, it was obscured by clouds so they diverted to the secondary target of the port at Belawan Deli. It was partially obscured by clouds and heavy squalls so the attacking aircraft had only moderate success, setting some structures on fire and destroying several aircraft on the ground. On 16 January 1945 the BPF sailed for its primary base in the Pacific Ocean, Sydney, Australia. En route, the carriers of the 1st ACS attacked Palembang on 24 January and 29 January (Operation Meridian). Illustrious's air group consisted of 32 Corsairs and 21 Avengers by now and she contributed 12 of her Avengers and 16 Corsairs to the first attack, which destroyed most of the oil storage tanks and cut the refinery's output by half for three months. Five days later, the BPF attacked a different refinery and the ship launched 12 Avengers and 12 Corsairs. The attack was very successful at heavy cost; between the two air operations, her squadrons lost five Corsairs to enemy flak or fighters and one due to a mechanical problem on take-off as well as three Avengers to enemy action. Her Corsairs claimed four enemy aircraft shot down as did one Avenger pilot who claimed victory over a Nakajima Ki-44 "Tojo" fighter. The fleet's fire discipline was poor when it was attacked by seven Japanese bombers shortly after the strike aircraft began landing. The attackers were all shot down, but two shells fired by either Indomitable or the battleship King George V struck Illustrious, killing 12 and wounding 21 men. ### Service in the Pacific Ocean She arrived on 10 February and repairs began when she entered the Captain Cook Dock in the Garden Island Dockyard the next day, well before it was officially opened by the Duke of Gloucester, the Governor-General of Australia on 24 March. By this time the vibration problems with her centre propeller shaft, which had never been properly repaired after she was bombed at Malta, were so bad that the propeller was removed and the shaft locked in place, reducing her maximum speed to 24 knots. On 6 March she sailed to the BPF's advance base at Manus Island and, after her arrival a week later, Illustrious and her sisters Indomitable and Victorious, as well as the carrier Indefatigable, exercised together before sailing for Ulithi on 18 March. The BPF joined the American Fifth Fleet there two days later, under the designation Task Force 57 (TF 57), to participate in the preliminary operations for the invasion of Okinawa (Operation Iceberg). The British role during the operation was to neutralise airfields on the Sakishima Islands, between Okinawa and Formosa, beginning on 26 March. Her air group now consisted of 36 Corsairs, 16 Avengers and two Supermarine Walrus flying boats for rescue work. From 26 March to 9 April, the BPF attacked the airfields with each two-day period of flying operations followed by two or three days required to replenish fuel, ammunition and other supplies. While the precise details on activities of the carrier's squadrons are not readily available, it is known that the commanding officer of 854 Squadron was forced to ditch his Avenger on the morning of 27 March with the loss of both his crewmen; he was ultimately rescued that evening by an American submarine. On the afternoon of 6 April, four kamikaze aircraft evaded detection and interception by the CAP, and one, a Yokosuka D4Y3 "Judy" dive bomber, attacked Illustrious in a steep dive. The light AA guns managed to sever its port wing so that it missed the ship, although its starboard wingtip shattered the Type 272's radome mounted on the front of the bridge. When the 1,000-kilogram (2,200 lb) bomb that it was carrying detonated in the water only 50 feet (15.2 m) from the side of the ship, the resulting shock wave badly damaged two Corsairs parked on the deck and severely shook the ship. The initial damage assessment was that little harm had been done, although vibrations had worsened, but this was incorrect as the damage to the hull structure and plating proved to be extensive. Vice Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings, commander of Task Force 57, ordered the recently arrived Formidable to join the task force to replace Illustrious on 8 April. In the meantime, she continued to conduct operations with the rest of the fleet. On 12 and 13 April, the BPF switched targets to airfields in northern Formosa and her sister joined the task force on 14 April. Since the beginning of the operation, her aircraft had flown 234 offensive and 209 defensive sorties, claiming at least two aircraft shot down. Her own losses were two Avengers and three Corsairs lost in action and one Avenger and six Corsairs due to non-combat causes. Formidable's arrival allowed Rawlings to order Illustrious to the advance base in San Pedro Bay, in the Philippines, for a more thorough inspection. She arrived on 16 April and the examination by divers revealed that some of her outer plating was split and that some transverse frames were cracked. The facilities there could provide only emergency repairs, enough to allow her to reach the bigger dockyard in Sydney. Task Force 57 arrived in San Pedro Bay on 23 April for a more thorough replenishment period and Illustrious transferred aircraft, spares, stores, and newly arrived pilots to the other carriers before sailing for Sydney on 3 May. She arrived on 14 May and departed 10 days later, bound for Rosyth for permanent repairs. 854 Squadron was disembarked while at Sydney, but the carrier kept her two Corsair squadrons until after arriving in the UK on 27 June. ### Post-war career On 31 July Captain W. D. Stephens relieved Lambe. The end of the war several weeks later meant that there was no longer any urgency in refitting the Illustrious in time to participate in the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands and the Admiralty decided that she would become the Home Fleet training and trials carrier. Her catapult was upgraded to handle heavier aircraft, her flight deck was further improved, and her radar suite was modernized. She began her post-refit trials on 24 June 1946 and flying trials the following month. She relieved Triumph as the trials carrier in August and conducted trials on Firefly FR.4s, Firebrand TF.4s, de Havilland Sea Mosquitoes and de Havilland Sea Vampires over the next several months. Captain Ralph Edwards relieved Stephens on 7 January 1947. On 1 February, she joined the other ships of the Home Fleet as they rendezvoused with the battleship Vanguard, which was serving as the royal yacht to escort King George VI as he set out for the first royal tour of South Africa. Over the next several months she conducted deck-landing practice for Avenger and Seafire pilots before starting a short refit on 2 April. After the tour's conclusion on 12 May, she sailed for Scottish waters for more deck-landing practice with the destroyer Rocket as her planeguard. On 18 July she rendezvoused with the Home Fleet to participate in manoeuvres before George VI reviewed the fleet on 22–23 July. The King and Queen inspected Illustrious and her crew, as did Prime Minister Clement Attlee and his wife. Afterwards, she was opened for visits by the public before returning to Portsmouth. En route she served as the centrepiece of a convoy-defence exercise as the RAF successfully "attacked" the convoy. After summer leave for her crew, she resumed deck-landing trials in September and October, including the initial trials of the prototype Supermarine Attacker jet-powered fighter in the latter month. In November the government accelerated the demobilisation of some National Servicemen and almost 2,000 men serving in the Mediterranean became eligible for release. They had to be replaced by men from the UK so Illustrious ferried the replacements to Malta, sailing on 21 November and returning on 11 December to Portsmouth. She was refitted and modernised from January to August 1948. Captain John Hughes-Hallett relieved Edwards on 14 June. The ship was recommissioned in early September. While at anchor in Portland Harbour on 17 October, one of her boats foundered 50 yards (46 m) short of the ship in heavy weather; 29 men lost their lives. Illustrious resumed her duties in early 1949 and conducted trials and training for Avengers, Fireflies, Gloster Meteors, de Havilland Sea Hornets, Vampires and Seafires. On 10 June Hughes-Hallet was relieved by Captain Eric Clifford. During a severe gale in late October, the ship aided the small coastal steamer SS Yewpark that had lost power. The weather was too bad for Illustrious to rescue the steamer's crew, but she pumped fuel oil overboard to flatten the seas until a tug arrived to rescue the ship on 27 October. On 2 May 1950, she arrived at Birkenhead to commemorate the launch of the new carrier Ark Royal the following day with the First Lord of the Admiralty, George Hall, 1st Viscount Hall, aboard. A Hawker Sea Fury crashed while landing on 15 May, killing the pilot and two members of the deck crew. The prototype of the turboprop-powered Fairey Gannet anti-submarine aircraft made its first carrier landing aboard on 16 June. This event was also the first landing of any turboprop aircraft aboard an aircraft carrier. Captain S. H. Carlill assumed command on 24 June and the Illustrious resumed deck-landing training. On 8 and 9 November the Supermarine 510 research aircraft made the first ever landings by a swept-wing aircraft aboard a carrier. This aircraft was one of the ancestors of the Supermarine Swift fighter. A month later the ship began a four-month refit and hosted the first carrier landing of the de Havilland Sea Venom on 9 July 1951. Later in the month she hosted the Sea Furies of 802 and the Fireflies of 814 Squadrons for Exercise Winged Fleet. Captain C. T. Jellicoe relieved Carlill on 27 August and the ship ferried 10 Fireflies of 814 Squadron to Malta beginning on 1 October. She exchanged them for Firebrands for the return voyage. On 3 November she began loading the 39th Infantry Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division in response to the riots in Cyprus that broke out when Egypt abrogated the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936. She set sail two days later and arrived at Famagusta on 11 November. She returned to Portsmouth on 19 November and began loading the 45th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, the 1st Battalion, Coldstream Guards, and the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment two days later. Illustrious set sail on 23 November and reached Famagusta on 29 November. She returned to Portsmouth on 7 December and she did not leave harbour until 30 January 1952 when she resumed her customary role as a training ship. After a brief refit in early 1952, she participated in Exercise Castanets off the Scottish coast in June and hosted 22,000 visitors during Navy Days at Devonport Royal Dockyard in August. On 1 September she hosted No. 4 Squadron and No. 860 Squadrons, Royal Netherlands Naval Aviation Service (RNNAS) for training, as well as 824 Squadron. Between the three squadrons they had 20 Fireflies and 8 Sea Furies when they participated in the major NATO exercise Main Brace later in the month. Jellicoe was relieved by Captain R. D. Watson on 26 September and Illustrious resumed training until 9 December when her crew was granted leave and the ship began a refit. She next put to sea on 24 April 1953 for trials and did not resume training pilots until the following month. She was reunited with the four other carriers that served with the BPF for the first time since the war for the Coronation Fleet Review of Queen Elizabeth II on 15 June at Spithead. The following day, the Fireflies of No. 4 Squadron, RNNAS and 824 Squadron landed aboard for more deck-landing training. During September she participated in Exercise Mariner with three British squadrons of Fireflies and Sea Furies and a Dutch Squadron of Avengers. The ship resumed flying training off the north coast of Scotland in October for two weeks, but she spent most of the rest of the year on trials of the new mirror-landing system that automated the process of landing aircraft aboard. Illustrious began her final maintenance period at Devonport Royal Dockyard on 10 December. Captain K. A. Short relieved Watson on 28 December. The refit was completed by the end of January 1954 and she resumed her normal role. The ship completed 1,051 deck landings and steamed 4,037 nautical miles (7,477 km; 4,646 mi) by April. She made her first foreign port visit in many years at Le Havre, France, on 20–22 March, where 13,000 people came aboard. After another round of flying operations, she visited Trondheim, Norway, on 19 June. During 12 days of training in September, she completed 950 daytime and nighttime arrested landings and 210 helicopter landings. She conducted her last landings on 3 December and arrived at Devonport four days later to begin decommissioning. Illustrious'' was paid off at the end of February 1955 and she was towed to Gareloch and placed in reserve. She was sold on 3 November 1956 and broken up in early 1957. ## Squadrons embarked